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Ifimm rf tjie SJorllt fa C«: 



AND 



THE CHURCH'S STEWARDSHIP, 



AS INVESTED WITH THEM. 

GEORGE bTcHEEVER, D.D. 



NEW YORK: 

ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS, 
No. 2 85 BROADWAY. 



1853. 






r 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by 

ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of 
New York. 



The Library 
of Congress 



WASHINGTON 



STEREOTYPED BT 

THOMAS B. SMITH, 
216 William St., N. Y. 



PRINTED BY 

JOHN A. GRAY, 
97 Cliff Street. 



\ • 



* 4 



"'-• 
I 






PREFACE. 

The present work has its origin in a course of lectures 
on that mighty phrase adopted as its title, in the solemn 
passage of God's word in Hebrews, 6 : 4, 5, 6 — and have 
tasted the good Word of God, and the Powers of the 
World to come. It is, in fact, a practical survey of what 
is termed in some quarters the Eschatology of the Scrip- 
tures ; the realities which according to Divine Revelation 
we are to meet "beyond the grave. We are wholly depen- 
dent on Divine Revelation for the least knowledge of 
them ; and yet that Revelation has so long rendered them 
familiar, that they seem possessions of our intuitive expe- 
rience, or gifts of our Natural Theology. Thousands 
walk beneath their light without thinking of them, and act 
by their light, without any acknowledgment of the source 
from whence it flows, as men walk beneath the stars with- 
out lifting up their faces to the heavens, and pursue their 



IV PREFACE. 

avocations by the conclusions of astronomy, without any 
study of the heavenly bodies. 

To know Divine Truth, the object of the soul's pursuit 
and affections must be the Divine Author of it. This is 
distinctly declared in that striking passage in Ho sea, 
" Then shall we know, — if we follow on to know the 
Lord." Correspondent with this is that grand passage in 
the thirty-sixth Psalm, " With thee is the fountain of life ; 
in thy light shall we see light." And correspondent 
with both these passages, and illustrative of them, is the 
great declaration of Christ, " He that followeth me, shall 
not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." 
All true, all living knowledge, derives its life, its power 
from this personal, experimental, heart-knowledge of God 
in Christ Jesus. In proportion as communion with God 
increases, so will increase the knowledge of his Word ; 
while without that communion, though the world were 
filled with Lexicons, Grammars, and learned expository 
helps of every kind, and philosophical and theological 
speculations ever so acute and erudite, the Word would 
remain a sealed Book, a dead letter. The Word is writ- 
ten for believing hearts as in sympathetic ink ; communion 
with, God by the Spirit is that hidden sympathetic fire 
that makes the letter burn, and reveals its meaning. 
Therefore, according to Cowper's sweet picture, 



PREFACE. V 

Yon cottager that weaves at her own door, 
Pillow and bobbins all her little store, 

shall have, by the humble prayerful study of God's Word 
by the Spirit, a knowledge of heights and depths in the 
Divine intelligence, that the most learned minds have 
never reached, and cannot appreciate. " I thank thee O 
Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid 
those things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed 
them unto babes. Even so Father, for so it seemed good 
in thy sight." 

The truths of the Divine Word are like the revelations 
of the starry heavens in coming to us, and in their more 
and more perfect gradual discovery By the construction, 
in later years, of telescopic instruments with vastly-in- 
creased skill and power, many a spot of cloudy indefinite 
light in the heavens, once thought to be an incomplete 
nebulous mass in process of development, has been re- 
solved into clusters of bright shining worlds, clear and 
unmistakable. So do the truths of Grod, when rightly ex- 
amined, break upon the soul. The nebula of the Divine 
Word, or what were once thought to be such, shall con- 
tinually be resolved into perfect and clear-shining stars. 
But the depths ! Infinite on infinite, beyond the possible 
reach of our vision, regions of truth roll off, filled as with 
suns and stars, region upon region, deep beyond deep, 



VI PEEFACE. 

riches unfathomable of boundless wisdom and love, that 
as yet no man hath seen, nor forever, perhaps, can any 
created understanding fully comprehend ! 

And let us remember that for our knowledge of the 
Word, in the nearness and the life thereof, we are depen- 
dent more upon the Spirit of God, than on any external 
advantages ; dependent entirely, indeed, upon the Spirit 
of God. Without that, the veil is on the heart, whatever 
be the external facilities of knowledge ; but when it shall 
turn to the Lord, that veil shall be taken away. 

We are said to be, known to be, nearer to the sun in 
Winter than in Summer. But the increased swiftness of the 
earth's motion in its orbit, together with the inclination of 
the axis in the same, prevents the increase of heat, that 
otherwise would be inevitable. The surface of the earth 
on this account is so much less time exposed to the sun's 
rays, and so obliquely that the heat is diminished by the 
nearness. Just so, the World may be nearer to God in 
position, by providential advantages, opportunities, and in 
speculative divine knowledge nearer, and yet, farther from 
God's love, less affected by his mercy, less warmed and 
quickened by his light. So it may be with an individual 
heart. One man may really be farther from God in posi-_ 
tion than another, and yet have a Summer season in his 
soul, while the other, though nearer in point of every ad- 



PEEFACE. Vli 

vantage and opportunity, may remain in the dead of 
Winter. The climate of the soul does not depend so much 
upon the nearness and abundance of the rays, if it is flying 
swiftly through them, and obliquely turned from them, but 
upon the steadiness and constancy with which they are re- 
ceived by a heart turned directly towards them. Looking 
steadily to Christ is the condition of light and life. Look- 
ing steadily to Christ, and thus only, can we see and 
know the Powers of the World to Come. 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

God — The Reality — The Idea 11 

The Denial of God 2*7 

The Search after God 40 

Eternity 53 

Probation 66 

Once to Die ......... 80 

The Judgment • 92 

Affirmations of Conscience in reference to the Judgment 1 08 

Disclosures of the Judgment 116 

The Person of the Judge, and the Evidence . . 184 

The Things written in the Books 149 

The Resurrection of the Flesh 163 

Awakening in God's Likeness 174 

The Resurrection of Damnation . . t . . 183 

The Work of the Angel Reapers 195 

The Power of an Endless Life 201 

Many Mansions 221 

The Building of God, for God 233 

The Family in Heaven 244 

The Power of an Endless Death .... 25? 



X CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Continued Wickedness, an Endless Death . . . 271 

Dead and Lost . 283 

The Argument of Ruin from Salvation . . . 295 

The Argument of Ruin, from the joy of Heaven . 308 

Character and Consequences 323 

Forewarned, Forearmed , ... 336 

The Ultimate Warning , .... 349 

The Church's Stewardship 365 



POWERS OF THE WORLD TO COME, 



GOD. 

THE EEALITY. — THE IDEA. 

The Powers of the world to come ! These words 
constitute a phrase, which, wherever it might have 
been met with, though in the pages of Plato or of 
Cicero, would have powerfully arrested the atten- 
tion of a thoughtful mind. And the more such a 
mind should dwell upon them, the more would they 
grow upon the soul, and rouse the imagination. 

Sometimes they seem presenting themselves as a 
wild rising bank of cloud in the midnight horizon, 
behind which and out of which the Northern lights 
are sending up a strange and flickering brightness, 
and through which the stars seem to struggle as on 
the verge of chaos. The sense of sin in ourselves, 
and the combination of certainty and uncertainty, 
definiteness and indefiniteness, clearness and mys- 
tery, locality and infinitude, in what is before us, 
adds immeasurably to the grandeur and gloom of 
the sway of the future. The conviction, universal 
and unescapable, that the guiltiness of our own char- 



12 GOD. 

acter and conduct exposes us to whatever elements 
of terror and of retribution there may lie embosomed 
and awaiting us in that undisclosed world, invests 
even the most indistinct revelation of it with an 
overpowering solemnity and majesty. 

What, then, are the powers of the world to come ? 
What precise forms of revelation, of thought, of 
conception, answer to the term ? Some things Na- 
ture herself teaches us, though we do not see what 
we might see, nor so far, nor so clearly, as we ought. 
We are as children in a dark room, waiting for the 
curtain to be lifted before some grand transparency 
or solemn show. It is dark here, because we have 
made it so by our sins ; most men make this vesti- 
bule of their eternal being a dungeon ; having the 
understanding darkened, being alienated from the 
life of God through the ignorance that is in them 
because of the blindness of their hearts. 

So they know not what is before them ; whether, 
when the curtain rises, they shall behold a world of 
blessedness and glory, or of terror and despair; 
whether the scenes that meet the amazed gaze shall 
be scenes welcoming the soul with songs to joy 
eternal, or overwhelming it with weepings and wail- 
ings, and the gnashing of teeth ; whether the holy 
light and the ravishing forms and employments of 
a celestial world are to surround them, or the dread- 
ful realities of the blackness of darkness forever. 
Even the quickened vision of faith sees as through 
a glass darkly, and to those who have the very 
witness of the Spirit within them that they are the 
sons of God, it doth not now appear what they 



THE REALITY. — THE IDEA. 13 

shall be ; only they know that when He who is their 
life shall appear, they shall appear with Him and 
like Him in glory. 

If, now, any one of the realities in that eternal 
spiritual state to which we are advancing, were sud- 
denly struck forth into visibility and brought home 
upon the soul, it would be experienced as a Power, 
in comparison with which, nothing else could gain 
the least attention or influence. There are princi- 
palities and powers in heavenly places, and the 
smallest appreciation of their glory, the slightest 
vision of the array of such creatures on their 
thrones of light, would be a disclosure and an ex- 
perience before which all earthly glories and dis- 
tinctions would vanish as insignificant and worth- 
less. If they were seen and known ; but they are not ; 
they may be imagined, but such things as these do 
not constitute men's native forms and furniture of 
thought — neither are they so revealed as to brood 
upon the soul and hold it captive. They are not 
m the dynamics , but the circumstances of an eternal 
state. 

Neither is it of the creature that men think, when 
they think of the world to come ; neither is it of 
thrones, dominions, princedoms, or tracts of space 
inhabited by worlds ; but they think of God. The 
thought that broods upon the mind, more or less 
distinctly, in every conception of the world to come, 
is that of meeting Grod. That is the conviction, the 
sense, the feeling, — lam to meet God; and that meet- 
ing is the decision of an eternal destiny. Every- 
thing marches towards that, everything is drawn 



14 GOD. 

in and absorbed as a bare attendant upon that ; and 
therefore we are forced, first of all, to individualize 
and define this phrase, the powers of the world to come, 
as including whatever manifestations of the Deity 
we have reason to believe or to know must then be 
encountered, and the various overwhelming dis- 
closures of God's attributes that shall open on the 
soul. 

The world to come presents itself to the mind as 
the more immediate dwelling-place of God, where 
He is to be seen, in a sense, in which He cannot be 
seen in this world. He fills, indeed, immensity with 
His presence ; He is here as well as there, in Divine 
power and glory, but in essence invisible. So that 
here, if men choose, they may forget God ; may 
live, according to the indictment against them in the 
Scriptures, without God in the world ; may keep 
the soul as empty, dark, and desolate of God, as the 
supposed vacuity and malignity of Atheism. But 
not so in the eternal world, where every eye shall 
see Him, every intelligent creature know His ex- 
istence by feeling it, and find the nature of His at- 
tributes by experience as well as observation of their 
power. There shall be neither darkness, nor igno- 
rance, nor insensibility. Even the blackness of 
darkness forever, will be no veil to hide the soul 
from the scrutiny and the sense of the all-seeing eye 
of an infinitely holy God. 

There is a foreboding of all this, even in the pres- 
ent world. Men expect to meet God. Even the 
Atheist, struggling against the belief, cannot over- 
master and annihilate the fear of meeting God ; 



THE EEALITY. — THE IDEA. 15 

cannot so abnegate the conditions of his being as 
not to tremble, lest what he denies may prove to.be 
a reality ; cannot pluck from his soul the twining 
roots of the primary law of its intelligence acknowl- 
edging a Creator. All men expect to meet God. 
Before all men the future world rises, as the province 
or scene of an introduction to the more immediate, 
inevitable, irresistible sight, sense, and knowledge 
of God. 

Now in this world, even in the idea of God as a 
belief, or as a constitutional intuition and knowledge, 
which is the ground of such belief, there resides 
something of that power which fills the eternal 
world by the presence and manifestations of the per- 
sonal reality. Over this fallen world the idea of 
God reigns, perverted indeed, in many cases, and 
deformed with monstrous superstitions and horrid 
miscreations of ignorance, depravity and fear, ac- 
cording to the process described in Romans, i. 21- 
25, but still a presence and a power, greater than all 
other powers ; and both in heathendom and Chris- 
tendom, it is the idea that leads on and governs all 
progress, all responsibility, all moral life. It is the 
idea that quickens and enlightens the conscience ; 
and just in proportion as it is brought near, and the 
soul is made acquainted and familiar with it, it 
rouses the whole being. Nothing is so overwhelm- 
ing to the sinful soul as a sense of God's presence ; 
nothing is so abasing and annihilating to it as a clear 
sight and sense of God. The bare hieroglyphics of 
His power and glory in the creation are overwhelm- 
ing, just in proportion as through them the soul 



16 GOD. 

dimly sees Him, and becomes penetrated with some 
faint conception of the inaccessible light, majesty, 
and infinitude of His attributes. All things that 
speak of God, and bring Him near, are full of power 
and glory. 

But the manner in which this idea affects the soul 
here in this world is infinitely different, according to 
the character which the soul wears in the sight of 
God as holy or unholy, and the relation in which it 
stands to Him as forgiven and at peace, or at enmity 
against Him. The idea of God attracts and pene- 
trates a holy soul, and absorbs it more and more, till 
every other thought is lost in God : being the power, 
by eminence, of the world to come, so likewise here 
in this world it draws and holds the soul accordingly. 
As a flame darts upward, so the soul of the creature, 
restored to its right tendency, with its sensibility 
purified from sin, soars upward towards God, pants 
to view His glorious face, longs to behold Him and 
to know Him. 

" I beseech thee," cried Moses unto God, "show me 
thy glory." The great prophet had been forty days 
and forty nights in God's more immediate presence, 
and he began to have but one feeling, one desire — 
the longing desire to see and know more of God. 
The nearer he came to God, the swifter was the 
course of his soul, and the more burning its ardor 
towards Him. All thoughts and things for Moses 
began to be absorbed in the one thought of seeing 
God. He could, like Peter after him, have pitched 
his tent forever there, and forgotten all earthly 
beings and objects, all creation, all the universe in- 



THE EEALITY. — THE IDEA. 17 

deed, in gazing upon God. Thus it is, and ever 
must be, that the idea of God, just in proportion as 
it opens on the soul, absorbs the whole being, en- 
trances all the faculties, and fills and satisfies the 
holy mind and heart with bliss ineffable, incon- 
ceivable. And thus are the desires of holy souls 
described in God's own word, as drawn out after 
Him, and only after Him, everything else passing 
into forgetfulness and nothingness in the compar- 
ison: "Whom have I in heaven but thee? and 
there is none upon the earth that I desire besides 
thee. My flesh and my heart faileth, but God is the 
strength of my heart, and my portion forever!" 
And again : "As the hart panteth after the water- 
brook, so panteth my soul after thee, O God ! My 
soul thirsteth for God ; my heart and my flesh crieth 
out for the living God." These are expressions of 
holy and absorbing emotion in the vision of God 
begun on earth, in the heart that is drawing near to 
Him, and finds and feels the all-absorbing nature of 
His glory. God is the soul's all-sufficient good — 
God is the soul's entrancing happiness. Nothing is 
needed to make a holy soul perfectly, infinitely 
happy, but just for God to exist, and continue to 
disclose His glory, and permit that soul to gaze 
upon His attributes. 

And so the great fact of regeneration, and of 
translation from the kingdom of darkness into the 
kingdom of God's dear son, is just the shining of 
God into the heart, to give the light of the knowl- 
edge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus 
Christ. Nothing of evil or temptation can stand 



18 GOD. 

against that ; all things of glory and of good are 
comprehended in that. 

And infinitely favored and happy are they to 
whom God thns nn veils his glory, they whom God 
chooses and brings near to himself, revealing his 
Son in them, and himself in his Son, and answering 
for them the prayer of Christ on earth ; a prayer 
explained only by this truth ; that God is essential 
to the soul, and that all bliss consists in the 
knowledge of God, and the sight of his glory. 
" This is life eternal, that they might know thee, the 
only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast 
sent. Glorify thou me with the glory which I had 
with thee before the world was. I will that they 
whom thou hast given me be with me, where I am, 
that they may behold my glory." It is the behold- 
ing of this Divine glory - that constitutes the very 
bliss of heaven. The Holy City has no need of the 
sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it, for the glory 
of God doth lighten it, and the Lamb is the light 
thereof. And the central supreme feature of the 
blessedness and glory of his servants is, that they 
shall see his face, and his name shall be in their 
foreheads. And thus it is that the very idea of 
God, whose existence is the happiness of heaven, 
whose glory is the light of heaven, draws all holy 
intelligences throughout the universe, absorbs and 
governs all minds, and is a Power in the world of 
faith, as a Power in the world of reality. 

But this same idea of God ; so full of glory and 
blessedness to all holy beings, and attractive with 
an all-absorbing irresistible power of gravitation, 



THE REALITY. — THE IDEA. 19 

is the subject of infinite terror and aversion to every 
unholy soul. That which constitutes the law and 
power of beatific attraction to the good, is the an- 
tagonistic principle and law of abhorrence and re- 
pulsion to the evil. The very essence of repug- 
nancy being bound up in it towards all wickedness, 
and in all wickedness towards it, it is the transcend- 
ing terror among the powers of the world to come, 
producing an intractable, spontaneous aversion in 
the sinful soul, or rather rousing up its native, in- 
dwelling, inevitable hatred into activity. The sinful 
soul experiences in itself an elastic coil of reper- 
cussion against God, and springs back with a force 
intuitive and unconquerable, from the presentation 
of the true idea of God. The intensity of dread is 
concentrated in the thought of meeting a holy God in 
judgment, nay, of meeting him at all. The thought 
of God, brought home, distresses the soul, even 
now ; it is a gloomy, dreadful thought ; for in a 
sinful mind there lies beneath it, there advances 
along with it, the irresistible conviction of justice, 
holiness, power, arrayed against the soul, na}^, infi- 
nite goodness, infinite love, compelled by sin to 
play the part of a devouring fire. God's intellectual 
attributes may be endured, may be admired, may 
be rev renced afar off, even by a sinful being ; but 
it is impossible that his moral attributes, when their 
operation in regard to sin is clearly seen and known, 
should be regarded by the wicked with any other 
emotions than those of hostility and dread. And 
God's infinite holiness, which constitutes the eternal 
glory and loveliness of his character, in the sight of 



20 GOD. 

all good beings, is the very attribute against which 
the guilty soul feels itself arrayed, and that against 
itself, is entire and eternal opposition. 

And so in the whole array of the powers of the 
world to come, there is the same difference to a holy 
and unholy soul. All the passages of Scripture, 
through which the light is poured down the most 
directly and intensely, are touchstones of the opposites 
of character. Take that grand and glorious passage 
in the Epistle to the Hebrews, "Ye are come unto 
Mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, 
the Heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable 
company of angels, to the general assembly and 
church of the first born, which are written in 
heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the 
spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the 
Mediator of the .New Covenant, and to the blood of 
sprinkling that speaketh better things than that of 
Abel.'' It will be admitted that this is a glorious 
and radiant passage, like the flinging wide of one of 
the gates of Heaven, where you may stand and look 
in, seeing and hearing celestial sights and employ 
ments. But with what eyes, and with what heart, 
do you read and behold these records ? Is there a 
counterpart of these heavenly images in your own 
soul, by the Divine Spirit drawing you towards 
them ? Is that the blessed power which they have 
over you ? Are they distinct and animating, or in- 
distinct, unattractive, and by reason of the central 
presence, the idea of God the Judge of all, is there 
present likewise, with all this climacterical array of 
beatific scenes and persons, an element of gloom 



THE REALITY. — THE IDEA. 21 

andrepellency? Gloom and repellency I Is it pos- 
sible to connect such impressions with the idea of 
God, the very centre and source of all the bright- 
ness, loveliness, and bliss of heaven ? Alas ! have 
we not seen that except there be an entire change 
from sin to holiness in the human heart, God, a 
holy God and a just God, is the transcending terror 
among all the powers of the world to come ? 

Take, then, the experience of two different men 
with this passage, the believer and the unbeliever, 
the man of God and the man of the world, the 
Christian and the unconverted. Take John Bunyan, 
and put him with David Hume, or Francis Spira, 
or any hardened, heedless, but dying and awakened 
sinner, and bring this heavenly transparency before 
them ; turn upon them the same shafts of celestial 
radiance. What is Heaven to the one is Hell to the 
other, the character and vision of the inward indi- 
vidual soul being the determining rule. The powers 
of the world to come are there, all thronging in that 
wondrous figured gateway ; but in one case it is the 
powers of a celestial world, in the other of a world 
of woe ; in the one case it is the power of Paradise, 
in the other of Hell. In the one case it is all that 
is dearest to a renewed soul, all that a holy being 
loves, brought near to the heart yearning after God, 
Christ, holiness and heaven ; in the other it is con- 
viction of guilt, and a fearful looking for of judg- 
ment and of wrath eternal. 

We see, then, that the loss and ruin of the sinner are 
an inevitable necessity in the nature of things, and 
not in any way a mere determination of the arbitrary 



22 GOD. 

will, but an evil which, in spite of that will, the 
sinner brings down on himself, by a necessity 
growing out of what God and holiness are, and 
what the sin and sinner are. Here, then, is a great 
touchstone of nature and of character. This first, 
dominant, supreme power among the powers of the 
world to come, the idea of G-od now, and the presence 
of God hereafter, is the preeminent and decisive test 
for the discovery of the habitual disposition and 
appropriate retributions of the soul. " I the Lord 
search the heart, I try the reins, even to give to 
every man according to his ways, and according to 
the fruit of his doings." For all this, it only needs 
the application of the attributes of a holy "God. 
True it is, that God's own will goes with His attri- 
butes, and cannot but be, not only in harmony, but 
in hearty and infinite cooperation with them all. 
God could neither be perfect nor happy were it 
otherwise. But really and truly, to decide the fate 
of every probationer for eternity, every moral agent 
in the universe, it only needs that each should be 
made acquainted with God's attributes, and that those 
attributes should just play according to their nature. 
No other judgment, decision or sentence would be 
necessary. If the very inhabitants of the world of 
woe loved God, if the crowd of the lost angels 
delighted in Him, and in the operation and glory 
of His attributes, they would be happy in Him, 
even in their world of woe. But there could be no 
such thing as a world of woe, if there were no such 
thing as hatred of God and rebellion against Him. 
When the will is submissive to His, that change 



THE EEALITY. — THE IDEA. 23 

alone is enough to change hell into heaven. When 
the will is opposed to His, that alone would be 
enough to change heaven into hell. 

And, therefore, this elective affinity will have its 
full sweep in eternity, and the elements and inhab- 
itants of antagonistic characters and worlds will 
draw off by themselves, in infinite purity and sepa- 
ration from one another, pure unmingled holiness, 
and pure unmingled sin ; pure and supreme love to 
God, absorbing all the being and entrancing it in 
God's own blessedness, or pure and supreme hatred 
against God, equally entire and predominant, and 
whirling the lost soul into the depths of an irremedi- 
able, unfathomable ruin. It is, therefore, plain, 
that for the decision of the question, to what world 
the soul belongs, there would nothing else be needed 
in the trial of all creatures, but just to stand at the 
gates of heaven, and see, in the turning of God's 
character, God's attributes, upon each soul, as it 
comes up into that light, what colour of answering 
character the soul itself assumes. If it shine with 
the reflection of God's holiness, if it be in sweet and 
blissful sympathy with that, then will it spring 
towards God, as flame darts upward through the 
firmament, to rest in his likeness and blessedness 
forever. If it be the darkening of sinful character 
that is made manifest in God's light, then will that 
soul draw back, and pass, silently if possible, but 
in gloomy abhorrence and despair, into that world 
of darkness, where the rule of the feeling of the 
inhabitants in regard to God is just this, — Farthest 
from Thee is best! 



24 GOD. 

So then we see clearly that it is not God's will, 
but the sinner's, that makes hell what it is. And that- 
world of darkness and of sin must necessarily 
be, in all its characteristics, the very extreme 
opposite of the heavenly world. This, where God 
is the glory, and the Lamb the light thereof, a 
world of light; that, of the blackness of darkness 
forever ; — this, a world of holiness, that, of sin 
and wickedness; — this, a world of love, that, of 
hatred ; — this, of serenity and peace, that, of rage, 
confusion, terror, remorse and despair. All things, 
indeed, according as God himself is the happiness 
or terror of the soul, will put on the same aspect, 
will wear the same character. " Whoso is wise, 
and he shall understand these things ? prudent, and 
he shall know them ? For the ways of the Lord 
are right, and the just shall walk in them, but the 
transgressors shall fall therein." The same attributes, 
the same ways, the same principles, will be happi 
ness and glory to the righteous, terror and misery 
to the wicked. It cannot be otherwise. It would 
be so now, in present, instant demonstration, were 
it not for Christ's death. That suspends the rule, 
keeps in abeyance the very nature of things, and so 
surrounds even the soul of the sinner with an 
atmosphere of long-suffering and forbearance in the 
offer of mercy, that God is not yet felt as a consuming 
fire, even by the wicked ; and therefore, on account 
of God's mercy, still waiting to be gracious for 
Christ's sake, men may for the present hate and 
disobey God, and yet not find, not in this world, 
from the laws of God, such a retaliation of their 



THE REALITY. — THE IDEA. 25 

guilt and defiance of the Creator, such an avenge- 
ment of their contempt towards Him, as would make 
any world in God's universe a world of retribution 
But by-and-bye, God will let things go. He will 
cast oft' the muzzle by which the forces of a just 
retribution have been restrained, to see whether the 
sinner would in the interval flee to Christ for mercy, 
and he will let those forces have their own just way; 
he will let the fire of sin, which the sinner would 
not have Him quench in this world, take its own 
course, and burn on unto perdition. 

Away, then, with all complaints against the tre- 
mendous truth of an everlasting retribution, accord- 
ing to character, and complain of God, if you com- 
plain of Him at all, because He does, in such amazing 
mercy, for so long a time, restrain His own attributes, 
and the natural and just operation of things; a 
restraint which makes this world such a paradox to 
the universe, and calls forth sometimes, even out of 
the anguish of His own people, tortured into tem- 
porary doubt and darkness, such strains as in the 
73d Psalm ; and from scoffers, walking after their 
own lusts, such sarcasms of infidelity and contempt 
as those recorded by Peter, saying, Where is the 
vaunted promise of the coming of your Lord to 
judgment ? 

O perishing and delaying men ! O presuming and 
abusive trespassers on God's mercy ! remember ye 
that the Lord is not slack concerning His promise, 
as some men count slackness, but is long suffering 
to us- ward, not willing that any should perish, but 
that all should come to repentance. Eemember 



26 GOD. 

what God hath distinctly declared, that it is a 
righteous thing with Him to recompense tribulation 
to the wicked, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed 
from heaven, with His mighty angels, in flaming 
fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, 
and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, who shall be punished with everlasting 
destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from 
the glory of His power, when He shall come to be 
glorified in His saints, and to be admired in all them 
that believe. And remember yet once more that 
you have your own choice of the attributes of God, 
which of them you will experience ; and that if you 
draw down His justice, instead of receiving His 
mercy and love in Christ Jesus, you do it against 
His warning, against His will, against His incessant 
importunity and efforts. He must be forever the 
same righteous God, but He would infinitely rather 
you would experience His righteousness in heaven, 
and rejoice in it, than draw down His justice in hell, 
and suffer under it. But as to Himself, He cannot 
change — He cannot abdicate His attributes ; and if 
you do not change, if you do not flee to Jesus from 
the wrath to come, to be in Him made partaker of 
God's own holiness, then that wrath abideth on you 
forever. 



%\t initial 0f Qlofr- 

But, notwithstanding all this, " The fool hath 
said (wishing, but not believing) in his heart, There 
is no God." He hath said it in his heart ; but no 
man's reason ever said it, or could say it. There is 
no one word in our language capable of translating 
this Hebrew word, fool. The moral meaning is 
deeper than the intellectual ; and how intense it is, 
may be gathered from the consideration, that the 
grander a man becomes in intellect and acquire- 
ments, and the more he has of the respect, honor, 
and even admiration of mankind, the more truly 
does this word describe his character, if the fool's 
heart depicted in the tenth and fourteenth Psalms 
be his. Those portions of Grod's word contain a 
description of the practical atheists ; and there are 
no other atheists in the world, nor ever will be, but 
practical, although they sometimes endeavor to hide 
the inveterate and radical vileness of the thing 
beneath a veil of subtle philosophic speculation. The 
spring and reality of the evil is always in the heart. 
The fool hath said it, and none but a fool would say 
it, though some have said it who have thought them- 
selves, and have been thought by others, among the 
wisest of mankind. 



28 THE DENIAL OF GOD. 

Three very striking paragraphs, descriptive of this 
atheistical juggling, by which the mind is subdued 
and blinded in the toils of a sinful heart, are pre- 
sented in the tenth Psalm. First. The wicked, through 
the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God : 
God is not in all his thoughts, or in all his thoughts 
there is no God. Consequently, he hath said in his 
heart, I shall never be moved, never in adversity. 

Second. He hath said in his heart, If there be a 
God, yet not a God caring for our affairs. He hath 
said in his heart, God hath forgotten ; He hideth his 
face ; he will never see it. Insensibility to God's 
attributes of omnipresence, omniscience, and pres- 
ent just providence, and thence a denial of the 
same. 

Third. Wherefore doth the wicked contemn God ? 
He hath said in his heart, Thou wilt not require it. 
Insensibility to God's retributive providence, and a 
denial of the same ; and thence a denial of the truth 
of a future judgment ; and thence a contempt of all 
human restraints and penalties, if by any act of 
power or lying they may be evaded. The whole of 
this Psalm is, in fact, an argument that not mere 
atheism, but a disbelief in future punishment, would 
break up all the foundations of social morality, and 
set men in a wild and savage freedom of " cursing 
and deceit and fraud." Take away the idea of a 
God, whose providence is personal, superintending 
and retributive, and you leave nothing for restraint 
but a present low expediency — nothing but self- 
interest in the present life, which, if there were no 
God, would be impossible to be demonstrated as on 



THE DENIAL OF GOD. 29 

the side of virtue ; for without a God, and his eternal 
holiness and justice, self-interest would as often lie 
in vice as virtue, and oftener in all forms of sustained 
and popular depravity. 

The most aspiring form of attempted intellectual 
atheism is Pantheism, which is but a sublimated 
materialism, maintaining that all the shapes of ani- 
mated nature, and man himself among them, are but 
organic harps diversely framed, that tremble into 
thought as the one intellectual breeze sweeps over 
them, constituting the soul of each and the God of 
all. All things are parts of God, and all being is 
to be absorbed in Him. The two things, no God 
and all God, might seem to be the extreme opposites 
and antagonisms of one another, but the truth of 
the existence and attributes of God is equally dis- 
tant from both. The atheism and the Pantheism 
lead to the same fool's paradise ; for as to religion, 
it is all one, as Howe, in his Living Temple, long 
ago demonstrated, whether we make nothing to be 
God, or everything ; whether we allow of no God 
to worship, or leave none to worship Him. And 
although the attempt may be made by Pantheistic 
abstractions of philosophy, and delusions of poetry 
to cheat the world with names and with a show of 
piety, the system of Pantheism has been proved as 
directly levelled against all religion as the most 
avowed atheism. Indeed, inasmuch as atheism is 
more openly blasphemous, it is less reputable, and 
therefore less dangerous ; while Pantheism, being too 
subtle and refined for a vulgar religion, and capa- 
ble of assuming an appearance of most devout rev- 



30 THE DENIAL OF GOD. 

erence and transcendental sentimentalism, may be 
really alluring, under an intellectual and poetic garb. 
It wears sometimes an aspect of mystic piety and 
wrapt devotion. It is a mist-piety, shrouding you 
with a kind of wet that penetrates to the very 
bones, if long enough continued, while a strong, 
drenching rain of open undisguised atheism, would 
have done its work only on the skin and clothes, 
and left a possibility of drying in the next sunshine. 
But this subtle system displays the semblance of 
absorption in God, self-renunciation, self-annihila- 
tion, union with the Infinite, and other things hav- 
ing some appearance of the self-denial and self-cru- 
cifixion for Christ, commanded in the Scriptures. 
But it is entirely inconsistent with a personal dis- 
cipline of the soul under Divine grace. To lay 
one's being at the foot of the cross, to mortify and 
subject the self-will to God in Christ, is widely dif- 
ferent from the vague, mystical absorption of the 
soul in a universal influence of nature. It is very 
quieting to the conscience, a charming anodyne for 
all fears of a future retribution, to believe in a vast 
system of necessity in which all things are parts of 
God, so that wicked souls themselves are but ac- 
complishing a mission from Him, and will in the 
end return into Himself, as waves of His own being. 
Even this the fool hath said in his heart, nor indeed 
is there any form of madness and absurdity to which 
men have not resorted, in the vain endeavor to 
throw off a conviction of personal responsibility to 
a personal God of holiness and justice ; a God who 
hates sin, and will bring men into judgment accord- 



THE DENIAL OF GOD. 31 

ing to their character and doings, for every secret 
thing, good or evil. 

But all this is the delusion or the speculations of 
a few. The great mass of mankind will ever go on 
believing in God speculatively, but wholly regard- 
less of the relation of their own moral being to His 
attributes, and insensible as to their personal re- 
sponsibility to God. Without Christ, without pray- 
er, without hope, without God ; — these are the ne- 
gatives that describe the existence of most men, the 
habit of heart and life with ordinary sinners. A 
sinful man — the subject of all these negatives, may 
yet be, as regards society, a very moral man, so 
called, so considered. He may be a very moral man 
towards men, and a very immoral man towards 
God ; in friendship with his fellow-men, but at en- 
mity against God. He may be so insesible in re- 
gard to God, and voluntarily and habitually so igno- 
rant of God's claims upon him, that he shall never 
have the state of his heart towards God come into 
notice ; so that the accusation against him of being 
an enemy to God shall be as unmeaning, or seem as 
incredible, as an indictment of personal enmity to- 
wards the forty-seventh proposition of Euclid. 

And yet, in all the breathings and outgoings of 
his being, he is opposing and violating the law of 
God, and the less he thinks of it, the more thorough- 
ly and habitually is such opposition becoming the 
law of his nature. There is no care for God in his 
existence ; into none of his plans does the consider- 
ation of God enter. Over none of his affections 
does the affectionate regard of God shed its hallow- 



32 THE DENIAL OF GOD. 

ing heavenly radiance. In no province of his mo- 
tives is the will of God supreme or even consulted. 
None of his desires are towards God ; none of his 
meditations, if he ever meditates, dwell upon God's 
attributes, and not only is God never in his 
thoughts, but even the idea of God is never pre- 
sented, or if it comes, it rises as an unwelcome in- 
truder ; it comes only to be expelled by the cares, 
the business, and the pleasures of life ; an expulsion 
in many cases so absolute and successful, that the 
distinct impression of the Deity, or even of any one 
of His attributes, has no more entered the soul, or 
been admitted, there, than the wind that breathes 
over the senses enters the brain, or draws a picture 
on the visual organs. The heart, mind, soul, whole 
being, have gone on for years in all their processes, 
with no more impressions from the nature or the 
providence of God to bring him definitely to the con- 
sciousness, than if the existence of God were a fable. 
When we consider what a being God is, and that 
we are His intelligent creatures, the success and 
power of this insensibility in excluding God, seem 
astounding and incredible. For one would think 
that we ourselves and every other created thing in 
the universe would be perpetually bringing to the 
mind irresistible notices of God, that we never could, 
by any possibility, get rid of Him, that no art of 
blindness in the memory would enable us to forget 
Him, nor any veil of insensibility to exclude Him. 
And yet there are those who, dependent from mo- 
ment to moment on the omnipresent God, have 
lived all their lifetime, up to the present hour, in 



THE DENIAL OF GOD. 33 

such utter alienation from Hiin, that, from day to 
day, and from week to week, as it passed by, it may 
have been said at each successive interval, God is 
not in all their thoughts. And if one should ask 
you how this has been brought about, how it could 
have been accomplished, how such a power of ex- 
pulsion in regard to the Deity could have existed 
in you, as might look to a being who knew nothing 
about sin like a stupendous miracle, what answer 
could be made that would explain the mystery? 
How has it been possible for you, the creature of 
God's power, so fearfully and wonderfully made by 
His wisdom, surrounded by His agency, pressed by 
the manifestations of His being, dependent every in- 
stant on His bounty ; how has it been possible for you, 
addressed by God's word, the subject of God's warn 
ings, invited and entreated by His own dear Sol, 
breathing every breath you draw by God's permis- 
sion ; how has it been possible for you to evade the 
idea of God, and to keep His existence and attributes 
from your positive notice ? By what process have 
you contrived to keep God out of your soul, and 
while surrounded and upheld by Him, to live without 
God in the world ? What frightful power is it that 
you possess, what spell of destruction and darkness, 
what diabolical energy, that you could walk all this 
while in God's opened hand of mercy, and yet not 
see God's eye upon you, not feel His all-seeing scru- 
tiny, not admit God to your consciousness, not have 
God in all your thoughts ? Who has helped you 
to remain ignorant of your omnipresent Maker? 
What league are you in with the spirits of darkness, 

2* 



84 THE DENIAL OF GOD. 

that you can shield your soul from the sense of His 
holiness and glory ? Or who gave you this cloud 
of spiritual death, this garment of perdition, woven, 
one would think, in the deepest darkness of the 
bottomless pit, that you can so wrap it round your 
soul, that the all-pervading God himself ceases to 
be the object of your attention? Who helped you 
to get rid of God ? Who tempted you to cast off 
the fear of God ? Who supplied you with expe- 
dients, whereby you might forget God, and what 
could induce you to shut the eye of your own soul 
upon God, and plunge so deep and mad into the 
death of trespasses and sins ? What amazement is 
is this in reference to God's attributes, that this 
body, the shell of the soul, can keep them off, as a 
casement of iron might keep off the flames of a con- 
flagration ! And what amazement in reference to 
your own indifference, that this infatuation, which 
must be voluntary, can be yours, and yet that such 
amazing guilt as it involves should make no im- 
pression on your sensibility, no alarm in your con- 
science. 

Yes ! it is an alliance with the powers of dark- 
ness, it is the mysterious permitted and tremen- 
dous agency of evil spirits, by which, in conjunc- 
tion with your own will, this anomaly of guilt is 
preserved in the universe. There is no conceal- 
ment of this fact in God's word, but a most explicit 
announcement of it, that in thus remaining insensi- 
ble to God and his glory, and to your own interest 
in the propitiatory death of his Son, you are under 
the admitted power of Satan, you are in covenant 



THE DENIAL OF GOD. 35 

with him, among the ranks of the lost, in whom 
the god of this world hath blinded the minds of 
those who believe not, lest the light of the glorious 
gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should 
shine within them. 

But while by this mysterious agency, in conjunc- 
tion with your own will, this involution of dark- 
ness can be going on here, can be maintained now 
in this world, it is impossible in the world of 
spirits; and we have reason to believe that the 
devils, who cannot thus remain blind and insensi- 
ble, envy the condition of souls that for a season 
can. The time of this possibility is rapidly passing, 
and you are passing from a world of faith into a 
world of light and experience. According to the 
relation in which you stand to God's attributes now, 
will be the operation of those attributes upon you, 
when you come to see and feel them. One reason 
why it is permitted to be possible to live in such a 
world as this without seeing God, is that there 
might be the possibility of a discipline of faith, by 
which we might become like God. The proof and 
manifestation of God " could not be intellectually 
more evident, without becoming morally less effect- 
ive; without counteracting its own end by sacrificing 
the life of faith, to the cold mechanism of a worth- 
less, because compulsory assent." God will have 
no believers on compulsion ; he will leave men to 
their own choice ; and the choice, if that of unbe- 
lief and insensibility, is that of the heart. Having 
the understanding darkened, being alienated from 
the life of God, through the ignorance that is 



36 THE DENIAL OF GOD. 

in them because of the blindness of their heart. 
But the time of this ignorance is passing, and 
though the enmity of the heart will remain, the 
blindness will be gone forever, when the veiled 
frame of a fleshly organization and a material world 
shall have dropped asunder. 

And what then will be the effect of a meeting of 
the soul with God ? "When face to face we shall 
behold him, when character shall be developed in 
the blaze of character ; when the attributes of the 
creature shall appear in manifest conflict with the 
attributes of the Creator, when the moral aspect of 
the creature's sin shall be revealed in the lightning 
flame of the Creator's holiness, the hideousness of 
guilt in contrast with the glory of the righteousness 
of God and angels, will there then any longer be 
the anomaly of an atheistic insensibility to God, the 
infernal miracle of a soul indifferent to his existence 
and attributes ? Every eye shall see him, and then, 
as the process here has been that of insensibility 
and the heedless accumulation of guilt, the process 
there will be that of the soul becoming all eye, all 
sense, all vivid sensibility to God, a quickened fiery 
conscience in regard to sin, a sense at once of the 
holiness of God and the sinfulness of man, of the 
glory of heaven and the terror of hell, of the 
brightness of light and the blackness of darkness ; 
a sight and sense of all things as they are, and not 
as when the delusions of the carnal mind concealed 
and belied them, not as when the dust and ashes of 
a sensual existence were laid upon them. Is there 
any guilty soul that can endure the terrors of that 



THE DENIAL OF GOD. 3? 

clay ? Is there any soul that can pass from an in- 
sensibility in this world, maintained amidst such 
radiant light from the works and the revealed word 
of God, without change, into God's presence, with- 
out the certainty, from the very nature of things, of 
misery there ? For without holiness no man shall 
see Grod, no guilty creature could endure the sight, 
for our God is a consuming fire. 

If now, these paragraphs are speaking to a sin- 
gle soul that has hitherto lived without God and 
without hope in the world, let the question be 
asked, have you made any preparation to meet God 
in that condition ? Are you ready to stand in his 
presence ? Perhaps these questions may fall upon 
the sense of some, in regard to whom this very in- 
sensibility to God is a source and subject of aston- 
ishment, fear, and almost indignation to themselves 
and to others. There are those who are ready to 
say, that I might see God ! that he would come 
out of his place of invisibility, and compel my in- 
sensible spirit to feel him, to behold his holiness 
and glory, and my own guilt ! that this solid 
world that closes me around, and hides everything 
but material existence from my view, might as it 
were open, and disclose the splendor of Jehovah 
in such overpowering light that I might never for- 
get the vision ! that this curtain of creation, in- 
stead of separating between me and God, might 
light up indeed as a bright transparency revealing 
his presence in power and glory, and compelling me 
to fall prostrate and adore ! that I might see him 
as Job saw him, and be compelled to cry out, "I have 



38 THE DENIAL OF GOD. 

heard of thee with the hearing of the ear, but now 
my eye seeth thee, wherefore I abhor myself, and 
repent in dnst and ashes!" 

And if this wish be sincere, then there is nothing 
which you would not be willing to do, to gain that 
purity and contrition of heart, through which alone, 
by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, you can behold 
God in peace. Sometimes the first beginning of 
life in the soul towards God may be the commenc- 
ing sense of this very insensibility, and the convic- 
tion of it as in itself a mighty sin, but a mightier 
proof and consequence of that death in trespasses 
and sins in which the soul has remained wholly at 
ease and quiet, not having God in all its thoughts. 
And if out of this insensibility there is an outcry 
after God and an effort to return to him and to find 
him, God will bless it. Yet there may be a great 
struggle and conflict. For it is a great mistake to 
suppose that this insensibility will be always rem®v- 
ed the moment the soul enters on the process of re- 
turn to God. In the nature of things it cannot be 
expected that the soul at one bound will recover 
from the effect of the habits of a life of sin. If a 
devotee of Hindostan, after holding his arm motion- 
less in an upright position for years, finds that it 
has grown there unalterably, is it a strange result 
from the process with his physical nature ? Can he 
expect by an act of volition to recover the use of 
that limb? Must it not be by a long and very 
gradual process, by multitudes of volitions and of 
efforts, each making the muscles yield perhaps a 
very little, and all necessary in constant repetition ? 



THE DENIAL OP GOD. 39 

Analogous to this may be the case of religious in- 
sensibility, although God himself is the Healer, and 
the heart, when changed by grace, is, as to princi- 
ple, wholly changed, and radically. Still, put the 
case in regard to your own dispositions and prac- 
tices, long inured and inveterate, and it stands thus : 
You have, by long habit, disregarded God ; your 
business, studies, amusements, pleasures, farms and 
merchandise, have absorbed you. Is the insensi- 
bility of death a strange consequence of this suffo- 
cation of spiritual life ? And can you think to re- 
cover from that insensibility, except by voluntary, 
patient, persevering efforts? You will say, it is im- 
possible ! And yet, in another view, and the right 
view, it is not impossible, for it is of grace. And 
so we show you a better way, or rather the way to 
enter on such efforts and maintain them, with an ab- 
solute certainty of success. You are to come to 
Christ. Your insensibility can be moved in no 
other way. And besides this, besides His being the 
only Physician that knows your case and can heal 
your soul, it is only in Christ that you can see and 
know God. In Christ, those divine attributes, by 
themselves destructive of the sinful soul, and of con- 
suming, fiery light and power, shall, with regenera- 
ting grace, subdue the soul, and renew it in their 
own nature, preparing it for God's holiness, by mak- 
ing it partaker of the same. 



CI}* $nxt§ aft-er <&»&♦ 

Oh that I knew where I might find Him ! The 
anxious heart of humanity speaks out in this sen- 
tence. Amidst all our darkness and insensibility 
as a fallen race, there is still a constitutional attrac- 
tion in our being towards God, as well as a consti- 
tutional necessity of finding Him. Our grand 
attribute of intelligence and immortality is just this 
capacity of knowing God, and this necessity of 
loving Him. Our reason is a gift divine, because it 
enables us to see God, because the idea of God is 
one of its intuitions, and the heart is under a law 
of the reason to love God. It is only in loving 
Him that we can find Him and know him. "Love 
is of God, and every one that loveth is born of God, 
and knoweth God. He that loveth not, knoweth 
not God, for God is love." 

He that loveth not, enoweth not. Let us 
set up that pillar of the beginning of all science, for 
if it be true in regard to God, it is true also in 
regard to all God's works. And a being constituted 
with the capacity of knowing God, could never be 
satisfied with any thing less than God. An imperious 
necessity of knowing and of loving is here. The 



THE SEARCH AFTER GOD. 41 

whole circle of knowledge and of thought in the 
universe might be exhausted, and it would leave the 
soul empty and restless without God. There might 
come a time when, to be shut up to the whole 
universe without God, would be as tedious to an 
immortal soul, as it would now to a man with the 
comprehensive intellectual power of Newton, to be 
restricted all his lifetime to the study of the primer 
of his childhood. There might come a time when 
the universe itself would be a prison without God, 
and the condemnation of existence in it a burden 
of wearisomeness and sameness, intolerable. For 
the more the mind grasps, the less it can be satisfied 
without God ; the more the soul knows, the stronger 
are the constitutional and eternal necessities of its 
being to know God; the vaster the reach of its 
travel in the created demonstrations of God, which 
are the consequences of God's existence, the more 
pressing and irresistible become the cravings of its 
immortal nature for the sight of God. For, wherever 
you go, whatsoever you do, whatsoever you know, 
rest is never in all creation, but in God ; happiness 
is never in created things, but in God; and the 
universe would be but as a wheel revolving with 
you transfixed upon it, and maddened by its rev- 
olutions, if you know not God. Everywhere, from 
the depths of immortality, the unsatisfied, rest- 
less yearning rises after God. The sound of the 
ocean of our being, as it breaks upon the shores of 
eternity, is the boom and roar of a desolate tem- 
pestuous sea, if it knows not God. The depths of 
an infinite despair, to a being endued with intell*- 



42 THE SEARCH AFTER GOD. 

gence and immortality, are in the condition of not 
rinding, seeing, knowing God. 

Ever, at the end of all knowledge, rises the ques- 
tion where is God, and the necessity of knowing 
Him. The more you see and know of the laws 
and glories of creation, the more heavily this ques- 
tion and necessity press upon the mind. It is the 
final end of all thought to think upon God ; it is 
the ultimate object of all steps, enquiries, researches, 
to find God. And the more you grasp of this 
material universe, in your studies, your investiga- 
tions, your comprehension, without God, you are 
but led to an open door, through which you pass 
into the blackness of darkness forever, if you have 
not found God. A created being might take the 
universe orb by orb, might travel from star to star, 
from sun to sun, from system to system, but nothing 
could give him rest; and everywhere, after all 
things were comprehended that God has made, 
there would only arise, with a more overwhelming 
pressure, the question, Where is God ? The nearer 
you seem to get to Him, as you pass from world to 
world, through the trains of material glory in His 
infinite temple, through the folds of the veil of 
created systems round about Him, the stronger 
becomes the attraction that presses you to him, the 
swifter this power of gravitation, as capacity ex- 
pands, and worlds are unfolded, and yet, if you 
see Him not, whither are you hurrying, and what 
can be the rest of your soul? You might meet, 
amidst the range of worlds, trains of angels and 
archangels, beings more glorious in themselves than 



THE SEAECH AFTER GOD. 43 

all worlds ; but the greater their magnificence and 
grandeur, the less the possibility of resting or re- 
maining among them, and the greater the pressure 
of the question, Where is He who made them ? 

The more you could, by any possibility, behold 
and know of all things but God, the more you could 
find out of being and of matter, in the roll of ages, 
if ages were allotted for the experiment, before 
finding God, the more universal, absorbing, irre- 
sistible and uncontrollable, would be the necessity 
that carries you towards God, the necessity of seeing 
and of knowing Him. Amidst all these unbounded 
and innumerable forms and glories of being and of 
matter, orbs of splendor, fires of intelligence and 
light, but one feeling would at length absorb the 
soul, but one necessity would weigh upon it, the 
craving and necessity of knowing God. The more 
infinite the variety of those glories, and the more 
unbounded their expanse, the greater the pressure 
upon an immortal being, towards Him who made 
them all. Where, where is God ? And what in 
God's universe can the soul rest upon without 
God? 

Such is what may be called the constitutional 
necessity of finding and of knowing God. But 
now there is, in addition, a still more pressing and 
inexorable moral necessity, a necessity of finding in 
Him a friend, the strength of our heart, and our 
portion forever. There is the absolute certainty 
of meeting God ; but how do we know what will 
be the effect of that meeting ? Eather, how can we 
hope, if we do not know Him now by loving Him, 



44 THE SEARCH AFTER GOD. 

if we do not know Him as His dear children, how 
can we hope that the meeting of our souls with Him 
can be an event of joy ? May it not prove, must it 
not prove, the most dreadful event of all our exist- 
ence, and deplorably decisive for eternity ? 

What if, amidst all these demonstrations of God, 
all these manifestations of His power and glory, all 
these avenues of worlds leading onward to the 
introduction, with all this constitutional necessity 
of knowing God, and this absolute impossibility of 
rest apart from Him ; what if the soul, the veil 
being lifted, and God's attributes seen, finds in 
Him an enemy ! What if the state of mind and 
heart that has prevented God from being seen in, 
through, and by His works everywhere, is a state 
of such opposition to His holiness, His sovereign 
will, that when He comes to be seen and known as 
He is, when the veil of the universe is withdrawn, 
and the soul is in His immediate presence, it shall 
be found that He is a consuming fire ! What will 
be the state of a mind that has groped through this 
present world of light in regard to God without 
finding God ? What will be the condition of our 
men of assumed science and intelligence, who have 
read nature backwards, and the more they have 
seen and known of God's works, the less they have 
seen of Him who made them ? What will he, who 
is now estranged from God, experience, when the 
attributes which he now denies, or hates, blaze upon 
him, no longer through the vista of a telescope of 
worlds, where he at present conceives himself to be 
at one end, and God infinitely distant at the other ; 



THE SEAECH AFTER GOD. 45 

but in a revelation that brings him face to face with 
Jehovah, creation all behind, and none but God 
before him and around him ? What will become 
of him, a sinful creature, in the presence of a God 
of infinite holiness, gone, against all warning, into 
that presence, in the midst of sin ? 

We do suppose that the revelation of God once 
made, the sight of God once seen, will command all 
notice, absorb all thought, leave no possibility for 
any created thing any longer to interpose before the 
soul, to gain from it a moment's attention, in dis- 
tracting it from God. If the Divine attributes are 
the object of the soul's affectionate and confiding 
love, they will absorb the soul in an ecstasy of 
being, in adoration and praise, to us inconceivable. 
But if the habits and affections of the soul be 
opposed to the Divine attributes, then the nearer it 
is brought to the contemplation and sense of them, 
the more intolerable the condition of that soul must 
be. For even in this world, the thought of God to 
such a soul is full of terror. A sinful being can 
never endure the attributes of God. And yet, those 
attributes once revealed, nothing in the universe 
will be able to distract even a sinful soul from the 
contemplation of them ; nothing will be worthy of 
notice in comparison with them ; and indeed, both 
with holy and sinful beings in the spiritual world, 
it must be the case that nothing will, by itself, any 
longer confine the notice of the mind, but every- 
thing will be seen as the Divine attributes play upon 
it, and are illustrated in it. It is God, who will be 
all in all to the righteous soul, and God who will be 



46 THE SEAECH AFTER GOD. 

all in all to the wicked soul. Now, God's works 
may be seen, and not himself ; God's works may be 
examined with scientific pride and pretension, and 
yet the Anthor of them never be noticed ; nay, His 
presence, His agency, if not His being, may be 
denied. Men may analyze the light of the sun, and 
boast themselves in the power of rational research 
and discovery, and yet never behold the light of 
the Sun of Kighteousness. Men may examine the 
organization of plants and animals, and the structure 
of a world, and receive the worship of their fellow- 
men for their acuteness and sagacity, and yet, amidst 
all this, neither see, nor know, nor acknowledge 
their Creator, but live and die Atheists, in a world 
sustained by God's presence and filled with God's 
light. 

But there, God himself will be seen. The veil 
that hides Him will be taken away ; or rather, the 
soul being carried behind the veil, God and His 
attributes will fill the vision. Creatures will no 
more speculate about His agency, but feel it ; and 
according as they themselves are consentaneous 
with it, prefigured for it, in harmony with it, or 
opposed to it, unfitted for it, and habituated against 
it, it will be the source of unmingled happiness or 
misery. According as they are the friends or the 
enemies of God, God will be to them either a foun- 
tain of love and blessedness, or a consuming fire, 
either the light of life, or a light revealing sin and 
darkness. There must come a time, when we shall 
meet God face to face, and that will be the revela- 
tion and the knowledge of our destiny ; that will 



THE SEARCH AFTER GOD. 47 

be the experience of heaven or hell. The light of 
these senses shall no longer hide from us the light 
of God ; the occupations of a world shall no longer 
distract onr absorbed sight and being from Him. 

Oh, then, what shall we do to find Him ? What 
shall we do to meet Him, not as strangers and ene- 
mies, but children and friends ? And how shall we 
be prepared to find in Him, when we see Him 
behind the veil, when sense and shadows drop away 
from around us, and leave us in uncreated light 
before the splendors of His infinite holiness, to find 
in Him, not the terror of our souls in His avenging 
justice, but a reconciled friend and Father — a for- 
giving, loving, and beloved God ? Oh the greatness, 
the majesty, the glory and the gloom of this mighty 
problem! How can men be so heedless of the 
meeting of their souls with God ! How can immortal 
beings be so thoughtless of the question, What shall 
I be to God, and what will God be to me, when I 
meet Him, when I see Him, when I stand in the 
blaze of His attributes, in the light of His counte- 
nance — when that light, angry or glorious, destruc- 
tive or life-giving, according to what I am, falls upon 
me ? What shall I find myself to all eternity, when 
character is all revealed and fixed forever — when 
holiness discloses sin — when delusions and distrac- 
tions are withdrawn — when mine inmost soul, and 
heart and being, penetrated with God's light, reveal 
their every process, habit, thought, feeling, sealed, 
by a contrast or similarity with God, for mine eternal 
destiny ? 

Surely this is the one absorbing question of our 



48 THE SEARCH AFTER GOD. 

"being — What shall we do to find God ? or, to change 
the question in a manner expressive of the fear, 
What shall we do to find in ourselves such a like- 
ness to God, such a participation in His holiness, that 
we may be prepared for that meeting with Him, so 
soon to take place, when this fleshly tabernacle drops 
from around us? " Blessed are the pure in heart," 
says our Lord Jesus Christ, " for they shall see 
God." " But, oh!" the sinner answers, "my heart 
is all impure, and I dare not, cannot meet Him;" 
and so, from the depths of the condemned soul, in 
the anguish of a troubled conscience, the question 
resounds, Where shall I gain that purity ? for my 
heart is all defiled with sin. Clouds and darkness 
are round about me, and in my sins I cannot see 
God. If I look to God through aught that I am in 
myself, I see him only as the righteous and revenging 
God of that holy law which I have violated. If I 
see His glorious attributes, it is but to see and feel 
their tremendous condemnation of my guilt. If God 
looks upon me, if He reveals Himself unto me, in 
my sin, my corruption, my ruin, I am undone ; for 
one t glance of His countenance, one ray of His in- 
finite holiness, discloses my darkness, mine impurity 
of heart, my possession of all the qualities that must 
banish me from His holy presence, and shut me up 
in hell. If God stand before me, and I see Him, I 
must cry out with Peter, " Depart from me, for I am 
a sinful man, O Lord !" Till I am changed, I can- 
not see God ; and who and what shall change me ? 
Till I am purified, I cannot see God, for my heart is 
full of sin. I cannot, dare not see Him; for the 



THE SEARCH AFTER GOD. 49 

very thought of His intolerable holiness, when He 
comes near to my soul, is more than I can bear; 
and my will is strong against Him, and my soul is 
dark to every attribute but that of His condemning 
and avenging righteousness. And yet I must see 
God. I am directed to His presence ; I am hasten- 
ing to His judgment-bar ; His mandate is upon me ; 
His indictment is against me ; His writ is after me. 
I must meet the King of terrors ; and after that, I 
must meet God. Oh, where shall I find Him ? What 
shall I do to find Him ? And where is that purity 
of heart, without which no man shall see God? 
Who has it? With whom is the fountain of it? 
Where shall I find it ? 

Oh Son of God most merciful, who didst speak 
those gracious words, " Blessed are the pure in heart, 
for they shall see God," have mercy upon me, for I 
am a miserable sinner! Oh Lamb of God, who 
takest away the sin of the world, have mercy upon 
me ! Create in me a clean heart, oh God, and renew 
a right spirit within me. Oh thou compassionate 
and forbearing Lord God, whom I would fain see, 
but cannot, have mercy upon me ! Oh divine Ee- 
deemer, who didst bear our sins, have mercy upon 
me ! I look to Thee — I throw myself on Thee. To 
whom shall I go but unto Thee, who only hast the 
words of life eternal ? 

Yes, O yes, to Thee, Lamb of God ! It is to 
Jesus Christ, and to Him alone, that this sense of 
guilt, this fear of meeting God, this conviction of 
sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment to come, 
this sense of evil in the soul, and this outcry of the 

3 



50 THE SEARCH AFTER GOD. 

conscience after purity of heart, points the sinner, 
yea presses him, burdened, anguished, dying, to the 
cross of Christ. The first step to the character and 
blessing of the pure in heart is to see our own im- 
purity ; and when we see that, and feel it — when 
our conscience accuses us to God — when we feel 
that as we are, we cannot meet God, cannot endure 
His presence, cannot see Him and live, then, as we 
look about in anguish for deliverance, for some 
power to help, to heal, and save us, all the voices 
of revelation point us to Christ — to that very Being 
who declares to us, that the pure in heart are blessed, 
because they shall see God ; for He it is, and He 
alone, that can give us that purity — that can, by the 
power of His own blood, wash away our sinful 
stains — that can, by the grace of His spirit, subdue 
and soften our hearts in contrition, in repentance, in 
faith, and prepare us to see God. He it is, who has 
been exalted as a Prince and a Saviour, to give re- 
pentance and the remission of sins ; He it is, who 
can take away the hardness of our hearts, our insen- 
sibility, our indifference, our love of sinning, our 
pride, our self-will ; He it is, who can make us meek 
and lowly in heart, can lead us to the mercy-seat, 
can teach us to plead His name and merits with the 
Father. "Will we come to Him for this blessedness ? 
Will we believe in His power and love ? Will we 
make our appeal for His mercy ? 

Ah ! perhaps we need to have God in some way 
come near to us in wrath, before we can be made to 
feel how near and how infinitely precious Christ is 
in His redeeming love, and God in Christ ! It is 



THE SEARCH AFTER GOD. 51 

the sight of God that possibly we need now, in con- 
trast with our guilt, in order that we may see and 
feel the greatness of that guilt. It is the light of the 
Divine Holiness that we need, to reveal the darkness 
and sinfulness of our own hearts, and the everlasting 
ruin that awaits us, if, with such hearts unchanged, 
we go into eternity. Oh that careless souls might 
see God in His holiness now, and feel Him in some- 
thing of the terror of His wrath and justice, in order 
that they might be roused up from their insensibility, 
and driven from their indifference, and compelled 
by the anguish of a wounded conscience to cry out 
for the Divine mercy. Then might they arrive at 
that purity of heart without which no man shall see 
God — then might they be prepared by the Eedeemer 
for their introduction to God in the eternal world. 

Would to God that the corruptions of this sinful 
and rebellious heart might be unveiled before the 
sinner, that he might be taken down into the depths 
of them, and made to see how he is filled with them 
— how they expose him to the wrath of God — how 
they prepare him, if he enters the eternal world with 
such a heart unchanged, to feel the attributes of God 
as a consuming fire. "Would to God that the hell 
of the sinner's own passions might beforehand be let 
loose upon him, that, by the experience of the con- 
flict, the strife, the war, in deep conviction now, he 
might be terrified from himself to Christ, might be 
driven to the Saviour for refuge. 

For, indeed, anything is better than the insensi- 
bility of this death of trespasses and sins. Better 
that men feel the burning fire of God now, in a world 



52 THE SEAECH AFTER GOD. 

of probation, than feel it forever in the world of 
wo ; — better that men see and feel the enmity of their 
hearts against God, and bear the stings of an angry 
conscience now, and hear the accusation against 
them in God's word as His enemies, than go on in 
stupid indifference, in the dream that they are His 
friends, only to hear His voice in an eternal judg- 
ment, "Depart from me; I never knew you I" — 
better that men learn their own character in season, 
while God gives them the opportunity of becoming 
new creatures in Christ Jesus, than to hear it first 
announced, and have it first admitted and under- 
stood, in the thunder of that dreadful sentence, 
" Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, 
prepared for the devil and his angels I" 



(EUntitjK 



Next after tlie Idea of Grod, comes tliat of Eter- 
nity. The Reality is one of the Powers of the 
world to come. It may be said, perhaps, that Eter- 
nity itself is the world to come, but it is more proper 
to say that the world to come is in Eternity, while 
this world, and we upon it, are in Time ; and the 
passage from Time to Eternity is by us conceived as 
something more than a mere going from one world 
into another world. Eternity ! Eternity ! We have 
indeed the Idea here ; we meet the Power there ! 
The moment a soul emerges from Time, we think 
of it as passing from a point into an infinitude ; we 
think of a boundlessness of which it must be con- 
scious, an everlastingness of duration, which it 
knows now only in Idea, but must know then, not 
in imagination merely, but in self-consciousness, as 
a Power. The change from Time into Eternity is a 
change in the whole position and relations of our 
being, all that is partial being left behind, and a to- 
tal assumed or entered on, within us and around us. 
Here we know in part, but there shall we know as 
we are known ; here we see in part, but there we 
shall see as we are seen. The language which Paul 



54 ETERNITY. 

uses in regard to eternal blessedness, will be here 
reversed in regard to the condition of eternal mis- 
ery. In either case, the entrance on Eternity will 
be the experience of Eternity, a knowledge of Eter- 
nity, absolute, and not in expectation merely; the 
experience of an Eternal Now which, nevertheless 
will not prevent the forecasting of a still greater 
experience either of glory on the one hand, or of 
terror on the other. Our whole being is so consti- 
tuted as to be perpetually now forecasting that fix- 
edness of doom, that reality of Eternity ; constitu- 
tionally we are expecting it ; we are anticipating it, 
whether preparing and planning for it, or not. It is 
the great cloud before us, into which we know we 
are to enter ; it is the great thought brooding over 
us, as the firmament overhangs our bodies, and we 
work beneath it without looking up, without think- 
ing of it. Nevertheless, immortality in ourselves, 
and Eternity to be experienced by us, at the great 
goal of our being, when we come to the end of the 
present (which is but the beginning of the endless), 
constitute the overruling consciousness of the soul. 
Whether a man be wicked or good, careless or anx- 
ious, this element of his nature he can neither deny 
nor abdicate. He may live as a sea-monster, down 
in the depths of a moral medium as thick as the 
ocean, but yet this all-surrounding air of his 
accountability and immortality is above him, with 
its universal pressure. The change from Time into 
Eternity will be the fulfilment of all this mighty 
anticipation of our mental and moral constitution. 
Then, Time shall be no longer ; for in this view, it 



ETERNITY. 56 

Is a thing only for beings on probation, and when 
that ends, Time ends, and Eternity begins. Time 
is the clock that strikes the hours of our probation- 
ary trial, and every moment is precious ; but when 
that is passed through, we must have a clock that 
strikes Eternity or none at all; and doubtless, 
when that is passed through, our very consciousness 
will strike Eternity, as now it strikes Time. Time 
is nothing there, since there is no more anything 
depending upon it, nor any use for it, but Eternity 
is all in all, according as God is all in all. What is 
Time, to one who has entered on Eternity, whose 
state is fixed for Eternity? A fixedness, which 
makes such a change, as to leave no longer any 
room for either fear or hope, the eternal goal of each 
of these passions being reached, and an unchang- 
able experience begun, which is indeed to be pro- 
gressive in degree, but absolute in quality, forever. 
Our motion on our axis may be what we please, but 
our orbit is in Eternity, and once launched upon it, 
we can do nothing but pursue it, wherever it may 
sweep us. Here, we have something to look for- 
ward to, of a nature that we never have experi- 
enced, but there, all is decided. Here we seem to 
hold our choices in our own power, as long as Time 
lasts; but there we lay aside our very free agency 
for a supreme eternal good, or a supreme eternal 
evil, that can never more be changed, nor our 
choice altered, whatever it may be. Over neither 
the evil nor the good shall we be any longer master, 
but it will be master over us, forever and ever. 
This mighty responsibility of an eternal destiny 



56 ETEKNITY. 

is on us all — a destiny soon to be known and sealed 
unchangeable, in heaven or bell. One would think 
this amazing truth would be supremely impressive, 
once announced, even if it were only probable ; but 
being certain, we should think the pressure would 
be felt, as of a great mountain, upon men's hearts 
and consciences. How can it be otherwise ? Never- 
theless, how little emotion — how mighty an insensi- 
bility ! And though the Judge standeth at the door, 
yet, because judgment against an evil work is not 
executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of 
men is fully set in them to do evil. Absorbed in 
the trifles of time, men give themselves no leisure to 
look beyond the present moment, and accustom 
themselves to anxieties only about the present life. 
The power of habit in this consequent insensibility 
is tremendous, and most disastrously successful. 
The merest, maddest vanities and dreams of time 
shall thus outweigh the interests of eternity. The 
miserable pursuits of the present moment are held 
so close to the eye of the soul, and its affections are 
so fixed upon them, that nothing else can be seen 
or thought of. We may hold a shilling before the 
eye so near, that it shall shut out heaven from the 
vision ; we may, with a mote between the glasses 
of the telescope, cover the orb of day. So men shut 
out the things of God, Christ, eternity, heaven, hell, 
wholly from their view, even by the barest con- 
sideration what they shall eat, drink, and with what 
their bodies shall be clothed ; and so the god of this 
world, even by things of this world, blinds the 
minds of those who believe not, keeping off the 



ETERNITY. 57 

thoughts of eternity, and absorbing the heart with 
other things, instead of the interests of an immortal 
soul. This power of the world to come, in such a 
case, is veiled, is hidden ; it is as if it did not exist, 
or only as an unmeaning abstraction. But yet it 
does exist ; and whenever and in whatever way the 
idea of eternity gets hold upon the soul, and gains 
the mastery there, it turns out every other idea ; it 
shows its power by its despotism ; it blasts the fairest 
visionary castles of the mind ; it turns the pleasures 
of the world into ashes. And God can, any time, 
bring this idea sweeping on the soul, like an army 
with banners. 

"We have heard of such things — heard of men 
seized, as by an invisible power, at the sight and 
hearing of the ticking of a clock in a crowded court- 
room, and carried forth into the open world, and 
pursued through all the lanes of life and din of 
business, unable to escape, till pressed to God's foot- 
stool in secret, and compelled to pour out, as a dying 
sinner, the prayer for God's salvation, wrung from 
the soul by the pressure of sin and the thoughts of 
eternity, and the question, In what world shall I 
dwell, when this world passes away, and I pass from 
it forever ? You have heard of the flood-gates of 
such thought, thrown open by the bare utterance of 
that one word, eternity, and, as if the fountains of 
the great deep were broken up, a cataract and storm 
of angry, gloomy, prophetic wailing and despair 
rushing through the soul. Under such a sense of 
guilt and eternity, no man can bear up ; but if re- 
tribution unchangeable have not already commenced, 



58 ETERNITY. 

or a judicial desolation and petrifaction of the soul, 
must cry out, God save me ! I am a lost creature ! 
God have mercy upon me, a sinner ! Lamb of God, 
who takest away the sin of the world, have mercy 
upon me ! 

Now, as it is in the power of the Spirit of God at 
any time to bring in this idea of eternity upon the 
soul with an exceeding and eternal weight, whether 
of glory or of gloom, we need not wonder at the 
instances on record of persons awakened by the 
mere hearing of the word eternity, or merely seeing 
it printed on a page. I think it is Hannah More, to 
whom we owe the authentic account of a lady of 
social distinction and gaiety in England, who re- 
turned one night from a party or a ball of great 
splendor, and found her maid waiting for her, em- 
ployed in reading a religious book. As she glanced 
at it, she exclaimed, " How can you contrive to amuse 
yourself with poring over the pages of such a 
melancholy work!" But her own eye had been an 
unsuspected inlet to the mind for one of the powers 
of the world to come, that it might enter, sweeping 
with all its solemn train the visions of her worldli- 
ness quite away. She retired to rest, but lay tossing 
in anxious thought, and when her maid the next 
day inquired the cause of her pale and gloomy mood 
and appearance, she confessed that it was wholly 
that one word Eternity, beheld in the pages of that 
book, which had startled a world of convictions, 
anxieties, fears, remorse, forebodings, that at length 
completely overwhelmed her, and no peace could 
be found till it was gained in Christ Jesus, till in 



ETEENITY. 59 

Him she had gained that preparation for eternity, 
of which the word had roused her to feel her need 
as an immortal being. And at any time that one 
word eternity may be the power of the Holy Spirit 
in the soul, to break up the fountains of the great 
deep of thought in regard to our everlasting respon- 
sibility and destiny. 

And truly, a right impressi®n of eternity is suffi- 
cient to make everything here, everything transi- 
tory, however splendid, however coveted, seem insig- 
nificant and worthless. A constant impression of 
eternity would make a man superior to all life's 
changes, shows, temptations and delusions. It has 
much the same effect with that of severe and over- 
whelming affliction, though in a different way ; for 
whereas overwhelming sorrow may bury a man as 
in a sepulchre, making him dead to the world, 
because he cannot enjoy anything, — the deep and 
vast impression of eternity raises him quite above 
it, to a place of serene and commanding observation, 
where he sees its vanity and madness. " I greatly 
deceive myself," said the great Edmund Burke, 
when prostrated by tie death of a son, as an oak by 
a hurricane, "T greatly deceive myself, if in this 
hard season of life I would give a peck of refuse 
wheat for all that is called fame and honor in the 
world." But the deep sense of eternity will make 
a man feel that all the riches and honors of the 
material universe are are not worth a peck of refuse 
wheat, even with the greatest zest and spirit for 
their enjoyment, except the soul is prepared to meet 
God, prepared for its abode in eternity. A strong 



60 ETEKNITY. 

sense of eternity, in its power of reducing the 
bubbles and shows of this world to their intrinsic 
vanity, and paralysing its grasp upon ns, is like the 
near approach of death, and for the same reason. 
Indeed, death itself borrows nearly all its power 
over ns from eternity, all its power to move ns. The 
brutes have no fear of death, because they have no 
life after death, nor the possibility of conceiving 
of it. 

In like manner, the mighty idea of probation 
borrows all its solemnity from the idea of eternity. 
We are on trial in this world, not for any limited 
duration of destiny in the next, but for an existence 
that shall never end, an existence determined by 
causes which here in this world we set in operation, 
and habits which here in this world we form or 
begin. Everything bears upon eternity, and takes 
its dignity and importance thence, nor can we live, 
in whatever way, without riving for eternity. All 
moral influences and causes run into eternity, and in 
human action and thought they are so innumerable 
and incalculable, that tho whole of what is sown 
here not only determines the whole of what is reaped 
there, but it may take immeasurable* ages to develop 
particular fruits from particular seeds here deposited. 
In that respect the mind of man may be like the 
universe of God, in which there are worlds whose 
light may have been travelling towards us ever 
since the dawn of the creation, and never yet have 
reached us. But it must come, it never can perish ; 
it may be millions and millions of years upon its 
way, but still it wings its wondrous flight, and will 



ETEKNITY. 61 

produce, somewhere, if there remain an eye to meet 
it, the image of its object. So it is with men's 
actions, characters, lives. As the planets are 
coming up in space, so may things transacted here 
come up in their reality, in their power, in their 
knowledge, millions of ages in the bosom of eternity. 

And therefore the idea and reality of time, which 
as to its moral character is very much the same with 
the idea of probation, borrows, in like manner, all 
its solemnity from the reality of eternity, the reality 
of an endless existence, the character of which time 
determines ; determines it indeed, not by itself, but 
by our use of it. What we make of time, time 
makes of our eternity. Time is the weaver of the 
garment of our existence there, and unrolls in an 
everlasting web, whatever elements of character, 
whatever threads of action, we put into his loom, 
we fasten to his shuttle, here. Time is the season 
of sowing, eternity of reaping, and the rule is, 
whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. 
This being the case, as time governs eternity, eter- 
nity gives to every moment of time an infinite pre- 
ciousness and solemnity. To-day has all the import- 
ance of eternity attached to it, concentrated upon it. 

Oh Eternity, Eternity ! By what way can careless 
men be waked, be roused, to a sense of eternity ? 
How shall that idea be stirred within them ? The 
moment its power is felt, how do all the vastest 
interests of time dwindle and fade into insignifi- 
cance! What are the proudest reputations, what 
the highest degrees of honor, what the most suc- 
cessful gains of ambition, or of boundless wealth, 



62 ETERNITY. 

or of personal gratification, whether sensual or 
intellectual ? Extended to the largest measures of 
time, what are they, when the end comes, and eter- 
nity is before the soul ? Oh for a permanent im- 
pression of Eternity ! Oh to have the mind and 
heart kept under that mighty guardianship, beneath 
the full weight and pressure of that power of the 
world to come ! How shall this be accomplished ? 
It cannot be done without prayer. It cannot be done 
without coming to Christ. It cannot be done 
without a living faith in him, as the way, the truth, 
the life. Apart from him, all truth is frozen, deso- 
late, ineffectual. The idea of eternity must be 
inspired with the life of love, or it has no power as 
an abstraction. It mav waken the soul, but Christ 
only can make it a permanent element of living, 
loving duty. But earnest prayer, by a soul coming 
to Christ, can do everything. In prayer, eternity 
is brought near, is realized. 

In prayer the soul is baptized by the Holy Spirit 
with power, and is transported from time into eter- 
nity, from shadows to realities, from dreams to the 
energies of life. When the soul wrestles in prayer, 
God causes the powers of the world to come to 
wrestle with the soul, and they enter into it and 
possess it mightily. The very insensibility of the 
soul is a thing which must be brought to God in 
prayer, and men must groan and agonize before Grod 
to have it taken away, and it will be conquered. 
It cannot be done without God's word ; but prayer 
causes the word of God to live within the soul, to 
burn in it as a fire, and to carry it away as on the 



ETERNITY. 63 

wings of a whirlwind. Habitual intimacy with God's 
word draws all the realities of the eternal world 
around the soul, and touches its forms of intermin- 
able and dreadful glory into life and power within 
it : — the clouds of heaven, the great white throne, 
the thronging angels, the books of judgment, the 
lake of fire, the holy city, the jasper walls, the 
golden streets, the crystal river ; principalities and 
powers of thought endowed as regal fixtures, as 
burning mountains in a vast horizon, as an atmos- 
phere or firmament brilliant with sparkling stars. 
When the soul is much conversant with the word 
of God in prayer, then the Spirit of God brings out 
its infinite treasures, kindles its fires, lights up its 
propositions, till they shine as suns, and carries the 
soul down into the abyss, or up into the third heaven, 
till all the powers of the world to come pass into 
a foretasted experience. For the Divine Spirit acts 
by the word, and reveals it within the soul as an 
irresistible agency, so that it is quick and powerful 
and sharper than any two-edged sword. 

Then there are other forms of truth which the 
same Divine Spirit makes efficacious, if a man will 
wait upon them. Let a man, for example, take 
Baxter's Call to the Unconverted, or Doddridge's 
Eise and Progress, with John Foster's Essay pre- 
fixed, and set himself to its prayerful perusal, and it 
will be strange indeed if the Powers of the World to 
come do not reveal themselves, and take hold upon 
his inmost being. Then, too, let a man watch the 
providences of God. Oftentimes they are greatly 
effectual in unsealing the prisons of the soul, and 



64 ETERNITY. 

calling dead entombed convictions into life, and re- 
moving the grave-clothes of custom, insensibility, 
unbelief, that swathe divine truth itself from the 
sight and feeling of the conscience. It is astonish- 
ing to see how suddenly a whole embattled squad- 
ron of thought and argument, that had been dead 
and buried out of sight beneath the insensibility and 
blindness of the heart, shall be roused into action. 
A patriarchal preacher in the northern part of our 
country, after a vain attempt to convince a couple 
of deniers of the truth of an eternal retribution, 
passed away in almost hopeless sorrow. But the 
word only waited the providence which was ready 
to give it pungency and power. One of those men, 
not long after, was cutting down a tree in the forest, 
and when it fell, and lay motionless where it fell, 
the text in God's word, As the tree falleth, so it Ueth, 
came to the mind of the wood-cutter with a force 
that carried away all his unbelief, let in the flood of 
the Divine Argument upon the soul, and brought 
him at length, in humble repentance and faith, at 
the feet of the Eedeemer. Sometimes God's "Word, 
Providence and Grace are thus united in so remark- 
able a manner, in subduing the heart of the sinner, 
that every step in the process can be distinctly 
traced, nor is there anything more interesting and 
instructive than the record of such cases. 

But let us remember that no impression of eter- 
nal things can be lasting, unless it brings the soul 
to Christ, unless, coming to Him, we secure His 
presence, power, life and guidance. There are 
no means of grace, however promising in their 



ETERNITY. 65 

first efficacy, but will become lifeless, will wear out, 
and leave the soul more insensible than ever, unless 
it truly comes to Christ. All the awakening books 
and providences in the world will fail to reach its 
state, will fail at length to move it, unless it obeys 
their voice, and does that for which they are grant- 
ed, for which all the interpositions of Grod are 
thrown in, unless it is brought to Christ, unless it 
gives up all to Christ. 



Urff&atifltt* 



We have seen that from the Idea of Eternity that 
of Probation derives all its infinite solemnity. A 
trial for Eternity ! "What a weight of importance, 
immeasurable, indescribable, in that phrase ! Yet, 
Probation is not so much the trial of character, as it 
is of the truths of God's word upon character. 
Character is already a setttled thing ; the problem 
presented in a world of probation respects the possi- 
bility of change for the world to come. For this 
purpose, through interposition of the Son of God, 
keeping in abeyance the operation of retributive 
justice, the powers of the world to come are re- 
vealed as truths and ideas, and are not known as yet 
experimentally as powers. For in order that a 
knowledge of the powers of the world to come may 
prove effectual in producing a preparation for that 
world, our state in this must be an arrangement by 
which experience is deferred, while information, in- 
struction, warning and persuasion are employed 
upon us. Such is God's arrangement for us by the 
power of the Cross ; God's goodness vouchsafes to 
us in that cross, a wondrous demonstration previous 
to our experience. 



PEOBATION. 67 

The great difference between this world and that 
which is to come, or the thing which necessarily 
makes the two worlds so different, is that this is a 
world of preparation for that. But in order that it 
may be such, we must be forewarned here of what 
we are to meet there ; we must know here in idea, 
what we are to meet there in reality. When we 
meet the powers of the world to come, our manner 
of meeting them, and the character in which we 
meet them, will determine our destiny. "We cannot 
change that destiny, after so meeting them. We 
may wish, too late, that we could. We may have 
disbelieved in those powers here, or taken up wrong 
ideas in regard to them, and we may find that on 
being translated among them, they destroy us; a 
thing which perhaps the Apostle himself refers to in 
the expression, if so be that being clothed we shall not 
be found naked ; but it will then be too late to make 
another choice, or to undertake to meet them in a 
different manner. We must prepare for such a 
meeting now. This is God's very argument; be- 
cause I will do thus and thus unto thee, therefore 
prepare to meet thy Grod, O Israel ! 

Now, as Grod's attributes are veiled, even when 
revealed, and some of them veiled, even in order 
that they may be revealed, we must, of necessity, 
exercise faith in regard to them. If we will not 
believe, and act accordingly, they will destroy us. 
There are some of them, which to know in this 
world any other way than in idea, would be our 
perdition. If a man will not believe this, and will 
not prepare to meet Grod, he must take the conse- 



68 PKOBATION. 

quences. If you should travel to the brink of a 
volcano with a man who had never seen volcanic 
fire, nor known anything about it, and if he should 
not believe you on jour telling him that it would 
burn like any other fire, but should throw himself 
into it, he would be destroyed instantly. Now, in 
regard to sin, and the unbelieving unrepenting sin- 
ner, we are distinctly told that our God is a con- 
suming fire. If a man will not believe that, but 
marches on as he is, to meet God in his sinfulness, 
then the fire of God's holiness and justice must con- 
sume him. In this world, God's justice is an 
attribute quite hidden from us by His mercy ; we 
know His mercy in reality, know it in ten thousand 
ways ; but we know His justice only in His word. 
His long-suffering we experience ; His justice we 
do not experience ; and therefore He seems to be 
slack concerning His promise, just because we are 
permitted to experience His long suffering, in the 
hope that we may be induced to escape the infliction 
of His justice before the time comes, when the blow 
can no longer be suspended. 

It is the wonder of the universe that it can be 
suspended at all ; for God's justice is just as dear to 
Him as His love ; indeed, it is but part of His love — 
an essential element of love. There could be no 
such thing as love without justice, and no such thing 
as justice without love. But as ours is a world in 
rebellion against God, it would be unjust in Him 
not to execute His justice, unless there were some 
plain reason for such forbearance ; for He has given 
a demonstration of His justice in all that He has 



PROBATION. 69 

done upon the angels that kept not their first estate ; 
and what justification can there be why the same 
measure of justice should not be meted out to us as 
to them ? Do not the same compulsions of justice 
and reasons of state call for our punishment as 
theirs ? What is the reason for this apparent capri- 
ciousness ? How can God be just, and not punish 
sin now, if He could not be just, and not punish sin 
then? Just this, and this only, is the reason — 
because of the interposition of His beloved Son, who 
did interpose, not for .the fallen angels, but for lost 
man. 

Now, to secure the benefits of this interposition, 
our world must be the scene of a second probation. 
It was at first a world of probation for the good, to 
see if they would sustain their trial, and persevere 
in holiness against temptation to sin. That experi- 
ment failed, and now, and ever since, our world is a 
world of probation, to see if the wicked will become 
good — to see if they will accept God's offered mercy 
in Christ. And to this end, as a matter of necessity, 
the penalty of God's law is warded off, is kept at a 
distance, in abeyance ; the avenging fires of justice 
are kept down ; the mouth of the bottomless pit is 
covered; the energies of retributive justice are 
muzzled ; God's hand is twisted in the mane of the 
lion, and his bridle and bit are in the jaws of Levia- 
than. And thus the world stands, 'twixt upper, 
nether, and surrounding fires, which yet do not 
burn upon us, because a form like unto the Son of 
God is seen walking with us. He, by the power of 
His cross, His sufferings, His death, keeps off these 



70 PROBATION. 

flames ; He stands beneath this firmament, and holds 
it closed, that else would spout cataracts of fire upon 
us ; He gathers the thunderbolts of Divine justice 
into His own bosom, yea, His own soul, (for Thou, 
oh God, didst make His soul an offering for sin) ; 
and so, as to us, they fall harmless, while the long- 
suffering of God, thus enabled righteously to wait 
upon us, spares us, and works with us, to bring us 
to repentance. He holds back these impending 
mountains of retribution that quake over us on 
every side, and the arrows of those angry eyes of 
Nemesis that glare upon us, and would blast us, and 
the fierce flames that would consume us in eternal 
despair ; and, instead of letting them execute their 
mission of justice, He turns them into mercy. He 
makes the very law that destroys us our school- 
master, to bring us to Christ ; He sheathes the light- 
ning, and lets it play for our warning merely. "We 
hear the roar of the thunder ; but it is God's voice, 
calling us to repentance, and to a quick, sure flight 
from the wrath to come. We see the angry eyes ; 
but there is a mournful tenderness in the light they 
shoot upon us. God's lightnings and judgments 
flash and play across this world, just enough to 
waken the conscience, and convince the soul of sin, 
of righteousness, and of judgment to come, but not 
enough to blast with angry fire unto perdition irre- 
mediable. God makes this a disciplinary world ; He 
is enabled to do it, because Christ has died; — a 
disciplinary world in so wondrous a degree, that He 
will make men's very sins to chastise them, and save 
them from perpetuity in sin. God afflicts, overturns, 



PEOBATION. 71 

disappoints, casts down, uses all the whips and thorns 
in the storehouse of His providence, for the discip- 
line of a probationary state. Sometimes He shuts 
up a sinful mind in such terror and anguish, that it 
seems as if the world of God's inflicted justice could 
have no greater horrors, but in the addition of 
despair ; and jet He does all this that the soul may 
be taught wisdom — may be brought to a timely re- 
pentance — may be kept back from madly pressing 
on to the experience of eternal justice, in the 
endurance of the penalty of God's violated law. 

Often, indeed, God's representations and provi- 
dences alike fail; and sometimes both men and 
n ^ons come so near to these walls of restraint, with 
such n^yage madness of sin, as almost to break 
through J^em, even in this world — break through 
into hell violently out of a world of probation. This 
was the case with Sodom and Gomorrah ; this is the 
case sometimes with individuals, who, instead of 
walking humbly, or enuring God's restraint, dash 
themselves, as it were, with headlong sins, against 
the thick bosses of Jehovah's Wckler, and impale 
themselves upon the flaming spikes of justice. You 
may often see men thus grasping God's sword by 
the blade, and indefatigably gathering the lightning- 
rods of retribution into their own hearts ; you may 
see men rushing into the mouths of lions, that other- 
wise would merely have roared afar off against them, 
for their warning and repentance. But in general 
the scene runs on, as a scene of wondrous forbear- 
ance on the part of God, perfectly unaccountable, 
whether to good men or angels, except on the 



72 PROBATION. 

ground of the interposition of a dying Christ, that 
He is with us ; that this is His world, where He suf- 
fered for us, loved us, died that we might live, and 
lives Himself now to save us by His life, as He hath 
reconciled us to God by His death. He hath recon- 
ciled God also to the possibility of enduring, with 
much long-suffering, a freedom for his enemies from 
retribution, even in sin, if haply they may, by 
Christ's dying love, be subdued to the power of 
mercy, and come to repentance. He has made it 
consistent with God's universal justice and love to 
let there be, in the sight of the whole universe, such 
a spectacle of apparently successful rebellion; o^ 
creatures in rebellion, and yet not punished?' 0I> 
miserable, vile worms in this external l'opnet, 
wriggling themselves in contempt ar>^ sneers at 
God's very forbearance, and crying out to one 
another and to God's prophets &■ scorn, Where is 
the promise of His coming. 9 T>o not the wicked 
flourish like a green bay-tree T Who is the Lord, 
that we should regard Him ? There is no God who 
will ever trouble Himself to regard us. 

These things, says Jehovah, hast thou done, and 
I kept silence. Tnou thoughtest that I was alto- 
gether such an one as thyself. And the quiet of 
Jehovah, or rather of Jehovah's thunderbolts, in 
such a world as this, is indeed wonderful. But far- 
ther even than this, God's restraining hand not only 
grasps the reins, to hold back the fiery coursers of 
his own justice, but is laid also on the very pas- 
sions of his rebellious creatures, which otherwise 
would create a hell even this side the judgment. 



PKOBATTON. 73 

God is here, in Christ Jesus, waiting to be gracious, 
and therefore he not only confines, keeps down, and 
keeps back, these fires and quaking crags of an 
eternal retribution, waiting to be just, but these in- 
ward fires of depravity also, in sinful souls, that 
otherwise would burst forth, defying all restraint, 
the fountains of a great deep of internal all-de- 
vouring passion broken up, and rolling in fiery bil- 
lows. God keeps off this catastrophe, that other- 
wise would be the very realization of hell before- 
hand. He reins up even the very nature of things, 
and the necessity of moral causes, thereby for a sea- 
son almost falsifying what he himself hath taught 
us, and what we know is true, namely, that wicked- 
ness in its very self, and. by an immutable necessity, 
burnetii as the very fire. He checks all this, and 
allows not these native energies to put forth half 
their strength, but arches over men's own tempes- 
tuous sea of wickedness in the very heart thereof, 
and makes a channel as it were, in which there is 
air to breathe and a space to move, and a practicable 
way laid down, on which they may pass from sin to 
holiness. By the very nature of this vast proba- 
tionary discipline, by mutual checkings and re- 
straints in this vale of a selfish humanity, which 
otherwise would be nothing better than a broad 
valley of the shadow of death, he makes possible a 
transit into life. Yea, even by setting passion as 
sentinel over passion, and making men's own sins 
grim watch-wolves against one another, he keeps 
them in comparative quiet. The pressure of men's 
own selfishness compels them to restraint, and self- 



74 PKOBATION. 

denial. The wind sometimes sweeps over the ocean 
in such a broad condensed typhoon, sweeps down 
upon it with such exceeding weight of fury, that 
the waves which otherwise would rise as mountains, 
are pressed down as with a colossal flat-iron, are 
concentrated in upon themselves, and cannot even 
break in angry foam, because of the immense pres- 
sure. And so it is with men's passions under the 
discipline of God in this world of restraint and pro- 
bation. It is not because the Lord is slack concern- 
ing his promise, as some men count slackness, but 
because he is long-suffering to us- ward, not willing 
that any should perish, but that all should come to 
repentance. 

And now just consider for a moment the astound- 
ing effect, which through the incredible deceitful- 
ness and desperate wickedness of men's hearts, this 
very forbearance of God in so many cases produces. 
Instead of escaping with all haste to the mountain 
refuge of salvation, while God's angels, under the 
commission of the Crucified, stand behind sinful 
men, warding off a tempest of fire worse than that 
of Sodom and Gomorrah, they turn this interval of 
peace, and hope, and proffered mercy, into an inter- 
val of delusion and indulgence in their sins, and not 
yet seeing and feeling the fire, will not believe it. 
And because sentence against an evil work is not 
executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of 
men is fully set in them to do evil. And there they 
are, on the way between Sodom and Zoar, sporting 
themselves with their own deceivings. Because the 
crags of fire are kept from falling, and the firma- 



PEOBATION. 75 

ment over us does not tremble in flakes and cinders, 
God's guilty creatures here mock at the promise of 
his coming, and turn the very possibility of re- 
pentance, which, at the expense of Christ's suffer- 
ings and death, he has provided, into a most diabol- 
ical distorted argument to make men believe that 
he will never execute his justice. Was the like 
ever heard or known, even in hell itself? Nay, for 
there, not the ideas, but powees of the world to 
come th'ey grapple with, and the devils themselves 
believe and tremble. They cannot doubt or deny 
God's faithfulness. 

But on earth the delusion and denial run yet 
further, and inasmuch as by this probationary dis- 
cipline men's own sins are kept down from raging, 
and they have leisure and peace to be amused and 
gratified, and God himself indulges them with his 
goodness, on very purpose to persuade them to re- 
pentance, they cajole themselves into the persuasion 
that they are very amiable creatures, and that sin is 
a very venial thing, and that God will surely par- 
don them even without repentance. Because they 
are occupied and mollified with earthly enjoyments, 
and seek and find honor one of another, and the 
passions of their souls, not thwarted and disap- 
pointed at every step, do not break out into open, 
angry malignity against God, they distort this quiet 
also, this apparent absence of a furious hostility, 
into an argument against their own depravity, and 
a persuasion that they do not need such a mighty 
change as the gospel proclaims necessary for them, 
and a delusive hope, nay, a lying assurance, that 



76 PEOBATION. 

they are nothing, and have done nothing, so vile, as 
to expose them to God's wrath, which therefore 
they need not be afraid of. Thus they turn God's 
very cup of mercy into poison for their own souls. 
His costly, precious medicine of salvation, and the 
gentleness, compassion and forbearing patience, 
whereby he renders it possible for them to be 
healed, they use as an anodyne in their sins. Truly, 
what a climax of iniquity is this ! If there be judg- 
ment for nothing else, surely such wickedness as 
this demands it. 

From such a view of the nature of our probation, 
we learn something of the strength of the argument 
within and without, that demonstrates eternal mis- 
ery to those who die in their sins. To die in one's 
sins is just to begin to live in them in all the terror 
of the second death. If here on earth men would 
not part with them under a system by which the 
Eternal "World itself could be brought into this 
world, to bear upon men's consciences, without con- 
suming their souls, what will they do in that world 
where all things will be left to work out their own 
nature and power to the utmost. Here, it is re- 
traint ; there, it will be perfect freedom. Habits con- 
cealed and partially confined here will break out 
there into an uncounteracted despotism. All evil 
passions will have perfect sway. 

We see, therefore, the necessity of the change 
from sin to holiness in this world, and clearly, in this 
world, or never. Here only, the nature of sin can 
be known, with a purpose and possibility of acting 
on that knowledge, where Christ Jesus himself 



PROBATION. 77 

keeps it from devouring us, that we may, Tinder ex- 
perience and discovery of our disease, come to Him 
to be healed. We must have conviction of sin, 
with faith in the consequences of sin, in a world 
where, as yet, those consequences are kept off. We 
must believe in the consequences, and be prepared 
against them, before they come. It will be too late 
afterwards. And as to the examination of the argu- 
ment from the nature of sin, and the investigation 
of the state of our own hearts, if we do not examine 
these things now, it will be too late to do so when 
we experience them, when all that was restrained is 
let loose upon us. For this examination, we must 
have a laboratory in which we can breathe. We 
could not analyze gunpowder in a room where the 
air was flame. We could not try the properties of 
arsenic if we were compelled to breathe the fumes 
of it. Here is Christ's open laboratory, both for ex- 
periment and change. Here is the place of the 
Divine Mercy. Here is the theatre of the sufferings 
and the death of Christ, here the trial of the virtue 
of His blood. Here, and here only, the law of the 
spirit of life in Christ Jesus can set us free from the 
law of sin and of death. Here is the scene and 
season of the application of all the influences of a 
Saviour's Cross, and all the motives of the gospel, 
all the hopes of heaven, and all the terrors of hell, 
all the powers of the world to come, and all the 
amazing experience of the goodness of God. When 
this scene is closed, when the shop is shut up, there 
can be no more such chemical experiments and 
changes. Now, the goodness of Cod leadeth thee to 



78 PEOBATION. 

repentance, but when all these influences cease, 
when all these merciful agencies are withdrawn, 
and God lets things go into operation according to 
their essence, then there will arise another demon- 
stration, essential to the glory of God, and the good 
of the universe, the demonstration of God's justice. 
Then they who mocked at His warnings, and de- 
spised His long-suffering here, cannot do otherwise 
than experience His justice there. Surely He will 
laugh at their calamity, He will mock when their 
fear cometh. 

We learn, too, from such a survey, what is the 
nature of the experiment we must make in regard 
to salvation, and how to make it, and to whom we 
must come, that in us the purposes of God's long- 
suffering may be accomplished. There is no being 
but Christ Jesus, from whom, for us, there is any 
hope. This world is Christ's world, given Him by 
the Father, that He should give eternal life to as 
many as will come to Him, as many as will believe in 
Him. He is our peace, our hope, our refuge ; He 
and He only, neither is there salvation in any 
other. "We owe all possibility of our salvation to 
Christ, and it is both for His sake, and by Him, that 
this great and wondrous system of Divine forbear- 
ance and offered mercy to the chief of sinners is 
kept up, with all the wondrous remedial agencies of 
providence and grace applied. Our building is in 
flames, and it is just falling upon us ; but Christ 
Jesus stands beneath the burning rafters and holds 
them ; stands beneath the great arch of the gateway, 
and bears up the pillars, and cries to all to escape 



PKOBATION. 79 

for their lives from the burning ruins, while he holds 
the door of escape open. Nay, He is Himself the 
door, and all that come to God by Him shall find 
mercy. But they must come in entire earnestness, 
and seek with the whole heart. "No lukewarm 
seeker," said John Eandolph, of Eoanoke, " ever 
became a real Christian ; for, from the days of John 
the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suf- 
fereth violence, and the violent take it by force ; a 
text, which I read five hundred times before I had 
the slightest conception of its true application." 



wtt to §it. 



It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this, 
the judgment. How impressive, how solemn, even 
to sadness, is this little word once. Sometimes it is 
the most solemn word in our language. In many 
of its connections, a world of meaning, yea, an eter- 
nity of thought and feeling, is thrown upon it. It 
stands in such a connection, and bears such a 
boundless weight, in that exceeding solemn passage 
from the lips of our blessed Lord, When once the 
Master of the house is risen up, and hath shut to the 
door. That once determines the eternity of mil- 
lions. 

It is appointed unto men once to die. There are 
a great many things that we can do only once. 
There are opportunities that we can enjoy only once. 
There are forms of trial that we can pass through 
only once. There are precious peculiarities of 
blessing that can light upon us only once. If in 
such cases the object fails, if their design is lost, if 
the one opportunity is wasted, it can never be re- 
covered. There is probably one decisive trial in 
every man's life, one point where all the currents of 
his probation pass into their eternal course. "When 



ONCE TO DIE. 81 

it comes to that, then everything is suspended on 
this once. A man may have many sicknesses, many 
warnings of death, but he can die only once, and 
when that time comes, not all the urgencies of the 
universe can put it by. 

On this word once hangs all the solemnity of every 
important crisis of our life ; for the moment you say 
twice, the solemnity and responsibility are not indeed 
divided, but carried forward from the first to the 
second, and then it becomes again once, and every- 
thing of importance is thrown finally and forever 
upon that once. It is only when the last opportunity 
has come, that men really feel the power of this 
solemnity, the weight of this responsibility. Given : 
a hundred days more of life : how many of them 
will the man of prayerless, irreligious habits be 
likely still to spend without God and without hope 
in the world, without any preparation for death and 
the judgment? Or, given: a hundred days more, 
not all certain, but within which some day will be 
the man's last day — that is, he may not live out even 
the hundred, but certainly, some day within that 
number, he will die, — how long, in that case, would 
he be likely to go on without repentance ? "We say, 
without hesitation, that ordinarily, a man whose 
habit of procrastination has gone with him, or has 
carried him through many years unaffected by the 
consideration of death and the judgment, unmoved 
by what he owes to himself as an immortal being, 
and to God his Creator and Judge, will not likely 
be much moved by the announcement, that he has 
only a hundred days remaining, and possibly not 

3* 



82 ONCE TO DIE. 

even a hundred. There is scarcely a doubt that, for 
the present, he would pursue the same course as 
heretofore. As he drew near towards the close of 
the allotted period, he might begin to be anxious ; 
but, even in the very last day but one, he would be 
very likely to say, There is one more opportunity, 
one more day remaining : I can close up all to-mor- 
row, and make my peace with God Or, it may be 
that, under the influence of long habits of insensi- 
bility, united with a gloomy sense of the impossi- 
bility or hopelessness of change, he might say, It is 
too late ; I must take my chance, come what may. 
In either case, not till the very last day would he 
f ally realize the greatness and solemnity of the crisis. 
Something like this course of combined insensibility, 
anxiety and procrastination, does really take place in 
almost every case of fatal sickness ; and, doubtless 
under the dread power of the soul's great adversary, 
a sullen despair often enters and takes possession 
before there is reason for it, and the victim of sin is 
struck down by those words, too late, before it really 
is too late. 

It is only when the last opportunity has really 
come that men begin to feel the power of that one 
word, once, and the solemnity of such a crisis. Only 
once more ! When it comes to that, the solemnity 
deepens indeed. The last performance of any duty, 
any action, any detail in the routine of life, to which 
we have been long accustomed, even though it be 
trivial, possesses something of this solemnity. Even 
to a prisoner confined for years, and now at length 
to be liberated, the last time that he should walk his 



ONCE TO DIE. 83 

cell would have something of this solemnity ; and 
the last remnant of any very precious thing is 
solemn indeed. Your last sight of the sun, or the 
moon, or the stars, or the ocean, if you knew it was 
the last, would partake of deep solemnity. The 
exile's last look at his home, his native land ; the 
last look of the mourner at the face of the dead ; the 
last farewell word or kiss of the dying, — what 
unutterable solemnity may be concentrated in such 
occasions! Paul's last interview with the dear 
church at Ephesus, when they fell on Paul's neck, 
and wept sore, and kissed him, sorrowing most of 
all for the words which he spake, that they should 
see his face no more ; it was just that that made the 
interview so solemn — the sight of the face of that 
beloved apostle for the last time. One may remem- 
ber an account of a bank note found in the pocket 
of a despairing, wretched young man, who had 
destroyed himself, on which was written something 
like this : My last bill ; the last remnant of a fortune 
miserably squandered, and I lost ! Or we may re- 
member an account of a man in a great emergency, 
when life for himself and some others depended on 
the instant successful kindling of a fire, finding that 
there was but just one match left, their last possi- 
bility. What a concentration of interest and solem- 
nity on that sole possibility ! 

But time, — when it comes to that — one more day 
■ — -your last day — your last remnant of a thing so in- 
finitely precious as that! Oh, who shall convey 
any adequate sense of the solemnity of the last draft 
of time upon eternity ! What if that draft were an 



84 ONCE TO DIE. 

unavailing effort of terror and despair, and on the 
back of it were written those tremendous words, 
Too late! How inexpressibly mournful is the 
lamentation, The harvest is passed, the summer is 
ended, and we are not saved ! How heart-breaking 
the wail, even of the weeping Saviour, over that 
beautiful and beloved city, once the Zion of the 
Holy One of Israel, and indulged with so many 
warnings, so many waitings, so much mercy, so 
much patience, so much long-suffering and forbear- 
ance, so many seasons of such gracious and gentle 
visitation, so many and such precious opportunities, 
precious and available, even to the last, and the last 
infinitely the most precious of them all ! "Oh that 
thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy 
day, the things that belong to thy peace ! But now 
they are hid from thine eyes. How often would I 
have gathered thy children, even as a hen gathereth 
her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! 
Behold, your house is left unto you desolate." 

In this there is a most impressive and admonitory 
appeal to every individual soul. For such is the 
dread experience of multitudes of men, trifling with 
Time, and permitting all precious opportunities, one 
after another, to pass unregarded, unimproved, till 
the last comes, and all are hidden forever ! Hidden 
forever as mercies, but only to reappear in another 
guise ; hidden from sight and from all possibility of 
recovery, now, but only to come up in the judg- 
ment. And with what tremendous power of retri- 
bution will such despised occasions of Christ's mer- 
ciful visitation come armed there ! Not more terri- 



ONCE TO DIE. 85 

• 
ble the gory apparition of murdered John the 

Baptist to the startled soul of Herod, than the 
avenging horror with which such murdered mercies 
will pass before the conscience of the careless sin- 
ner. Of all transactions in that Coming Day, per- 
haps none will occasion a more intense bitterness of 
remorse, and unavailing regret, or an angrier, 
keener anguish of despair, than the review of slight- 
ed, wasted opportunities of eternal mercy. 

Indeed, we take it to be this that is especially re- 
ferred to in that incomparably solemn passage of 
God's word, " Because I have called, and ye refused ; 
I have stretched out my hand, and no man regard- 
ed ; but ye have set at naught all my counsel, and 
would none of my reproof; I also will laugh at 
your calamity, I will mock when your fear cometh : 
when your fear cometh as desolation, and your 
destruction as a whirlwind; when distress and 
anguish cometh upon you. Then shall they call 
upon me, but I will not answer ; they shall seek me 
early, but they shall not find me ; for that they 
hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the 
Lord. They would none of my counsel, they de- 
spised all my reproofs, therefore shall they eat of the 
fruits of their own way, and be filled with their own 
devices. For the turning away of the simple shall 
slay them, and the prosperity of fools shall destroy 
them." 

In this profoundly-instructive and warning pas- 
sage, it is the turning away, the mere turning away 
of the soul, from invitations, admonitions, opportu- 
nities of salvation, that shall accomplish the destruc- 



86 ONCE TO DIE. 

tion, otherwise not accomplished, and shall be the 
very heart and seal of desolation to the lost soul, 
otherwise saved. Every gracious opportunity is 
God's merciful call, every day of time, and of light 
from the cross, is a new emphatic gesture of God's 
outstretched hand ; and when all these oft-repeated 
and compassionate efforts of Divine love disregard- 
ed come up for review, with the cost at which every 
one of them was exercised, and the manner in which 
they were all treated, then will the sight and sense 
of these things alone, were there nothing else of 
judgment, be a calamity like a whirlwind, taking 
away the soul. 

But how can men persist in such madness ? 
What indescribable folly, what desperate fool hardi- 
ness, so to deal with time, in reference to eternity ! 
What madness to defer, we will not say to a con- 
venient season, but, as generally happens in such a 
case, to the last season, the soul's efforts for eternity ! 
Think of the madness of throwing all your fortunes, 
like an insane dicer, on the last throw. If you were 
merely at a distance from home, and it were ne- 
cessary for you to return by a set day, you would 
feel it important for you to take an early train, and 
not throw the whole possibility of a seasonable re- 
turn upon the last train. And so with regard to 
any and every very important interest. 

Now the whole amazing weight of all these con- 
siderations comes down upon this one word once, 
in reference to death and the judgment that 's to 
follow. This very word, in the great and solemn 
text in Hebrews, is chosen, and the whole thought 



ONCE TO DIE. 87 

is arranged, with all this solemnity that we have 
described, and more than all that we can conceive, 
investing it. It is appointed unto men once to die, 
and only once, and then they are forced across the 
tremendous verge, for eternity. You cannot die, 
and make the experiment of what is to come after 
death, and then, if you do not like it, return to have 
one chance over again, or to make a new choice in 
your mode of life, and your manner of entering the 
eternal world. You cannot die but once, and that 
once settles your life or death for eternity. It is 
the last-train. And yet, from the neglect of all men 
to prepare for death, an unknowing beholder would 
say, There must be other trains ; this cannot be the 
final passage. For how can men busy themselves 
with the trifles of time, in such amazing unconcern 
as to the great object and end of time, — Eternity! 
Is there anything that can give any adequate 
idea of such madness ? Let us suppose that Sodom 
and Gomorrah had been cities in the sea, like 
Venice, and that the only mode of access and de- 
parture had been by a steam-vessel, and that the 
last evening before the destruction of those cities, it 
had been distinctly made known that a steamer 
would leave for the opposite coast precisely at the 
hour of nine, the only steamer, and the last voyage 
ever to be made, the last opportunity of escape from 
the impending ruin. It has been distinctly an- 
nounced that on the instant departure of that 
steamer, the storm of fire and brimstone would burst 
over the whole city in avenging flames, and there 
are some professed believers in that overhanging 



88 ONCE TO DIE. 

perdition, who have resolved to set sail in that very 
steamer. But instead of being on the pier at the 
appointed hour, watching and praying, they were 
waiting to pack up their jewels, or to enjoy one 
more social festival, one more masquerading ball in 
Sodom's theatre, one more ballet dance in Gomor- 
rah's scenic opera, or to finish one more speculation 
in their city lots, in case the ground itself might not 
be swallowed up, and they could return and build 
again upon their property. Yet, after all this, they 
hurried in their carriage to the pier, but only to 
arrive there just as the steamer had cast off her 
moorings, and was darting on her way. They had 
but half believed that she would go ; but now they 
see her for the last time, and it is too late. They 
had not half believed that the storm of fire would 
come ; but now the pitchy lurid cloud of fire and 
smoke has rolled over the whole city, and the roar- 
ing of the thunder is so near, incessant and terrible, 
that their souls are paralyzed with despair, and the 
flakes of fire are already dropping upon them, and 
there is no escape. It is manifestly too late ; con- 
viction has come too late ; decision too late ; there is 
no remedy. 

But would the terror of such despair be any ade- 
quate measure of the calamity upon the soul of 
being too late for an eternal salvation ? Alas ! 
nothing can measure that. And yet, the madness 
of such infatuation in Sodom, such procrastination 
in Gomorrah, would be some faint image of the folly 
of a soul, dancing on in sin, and dreaming on from 
speculation to speculation, always counting upon 



ONCE TO DIE. 89 

time, and neglecting, till too late, all preparation for 
death and Eternity. It is possible to be prepared ; 
to be prepared to-day, in case you should be called 
to-morrow. Yea, by going to Christ to-day, it is 
possible to be so prepared, that if to-night thy soul 
should be required of thee, to-night thou shouldst 
be with Jesus in Paradise. What infinite madness 
therefore to delay ! If you could not he prepared 
till some future period, then were there some excuse 
for some little procrastination ; but where grace is 
at your disposal now, if you will accept of it, what 
madness to neglect it ! If you were sure of another 
opportunity, you cannot be sure that then it will be 
available. 

The other day, just as a railroad train had 
started, a man was seen at the top of his speed to 
overtake the cars, and he barely succeeded in lay- 
ing hold of the handle to throw himself upon the 
steps, when his foot missed, and he was thrown by 
the very violence of his motion under the wheels 
of the cars, and died instantly. He was too late, 
and the very effort to recover his last and lost op- 
portunity, destroyed him. 

Again, the other day, just as a steamer was start- 
ing from the ferry, a man was seen to rush in reck- 
less haste to the edge of the floating pier, and thence 
with all the impetus of his motion, leaped for the 
deck of the steamer, but even while he was leaping, 
the distance had enlarged, and he sunk beneath the 
boiling billows. He was too late ; and the very 
recklessness of despair hurried him to his ruin. So 
it is with multitudes who have put off a passage in 



90 ONCE TO DIE. 

the Ark of Salvation to the last opportunity, and 
the last is too late. 

Not long since in England, a grave, respectable 
man, perhaps sixty years of age, stood by the cars 
just as they were starting, undecided whether to go 
or not. There were friends within the carriage, 
urging him to step on board, but he kept saying, 
"No, not this time," and yet kept hold upon the 
very handle of the door, half inclined to go, and 
balancing between going and staying, when the 
motion of the cars threw him from his balance, and 
before they could be stopped, he was crushed to 
death between the cars and the platform. He was 
undecided up to the last moment, till it was too 
late, and his very indecision was the cause of his 
destruction. So it is in multitudes of cases, with 
those who mean to go, but are never quite ready, 
not just now, not just this opportunity, till already 
it is the last opportunity, and the unhappy victim 
of indecision and procrastination knows it not. 

With great power of solemnity the once employed 
in scripture, on the subject of death and the judg- 
ment, teaches us the hazard of the habit of delay. 
It is the habit that all men have formed, who have 
not fled to Jesus Christ from the storm of fire that 
is coming. Every day it grows stronger and 
stronger. Every day there is greater power of self- 
delusion, persuading you that to-morrow shall be as 
this day, and much more abundant, while every 
day there is greater certainty that to-morrow will 
not be as this day, and greater probability that to- 
morrow may be the day when you shall meet the 



ONCE TO DIE. 91 

decisive once of the text, that is to settle your whole 
eternal destiny. Are you prepared to die ? If not, 
every hour of your life is madness, and every action 
of your life is a new mortgage of Satan upon you. 
Are you prepared to die ? Thus only are you the 
master of your own life, but otherwise, it is com- 
pletely in the power of Satan, and may remain so to 
the last moment. Are you thinking to be pre- 
pared? Ten thousand thousand have been think- 
ing in the same way, and while thinking, have died. 
Are you yet undecided? Then you are leaving 
death itself to decide the matter for you, and if 
death decides for you, he decides against you. 
Then, too, every time you think of being prepared, 
of coming to Christ, and do not come, you deliber- 
ately decide against Mm. It is not merely saying, 
by and by, but positively declaring, not now. Af- 
ter every such negative, your likelihood of dying 
unprepared is greatly increased. Your habit of de- 
ciding wrong is strengthened, your habit of inde- 
cision as to the right is strengthened also. The 
case is mightily against you, if you do not break 
from this habit, this very day. If you leave the 
decision to sickness to startle and impel you, the 
probability is, nay, the almost certainty, that you 
leave it to death. Take your health, and not your 
sickness, take your hour of life, and not of death, 
for going to Christ. Take to-day, for that is the 
direction of the Holy Ghost, and only when you 
obey God to the letter are you sure of salvation. 



€|* fttfrputtt. 



The doctrine of a day of judgment, and the de- 
tails respecting it, are matters of pure revelation. 
Our natural theology, through the human conscience, 
and by the convictions of mankind, in view of the 
inequalities and imperfections of the present state as 
the system of a moral Governor, does indeed demon- 
strate a future reckoning and righting of all things 
in regard to the righteous and the wicked — demon- 
strates a future state of retribution. But of a day 
of judgment, and of the appointments and arrange- 
ments of Grod in regard to it, there is nothing taught 
outside the Book of Eevelation. All pretended new 
revelations in regard to these things, so far as there 
is any truth in them, are but fire stolen from God's 
word, and palmed upon the world as new, original 
discoveries ; and this is a species of plagiarism of 
which none but a being who could say, Evil, be 
thou my good! would dare be at the foundation. 
Accordingly, it is found to be a characteristic of all 
such pretended discoveries, that they diminish the 
sanctions of God's word. Their object is, not to 
give us higher truth, but to narrow, degrade and 
falsify, or neutralize the truth already in our keep- 



THE JUDGMENT. 93 

ing. Whatever they teach is lower than that which 
is already taught, and diminishes its sanctions. If 
there were many such progressive revelations, all 
positive truth would at length be annihilated. There 
are two passages in regard to all such pretended 
revelators, that stand as fiery cherubim, with drawn 
swords, at the gates of the sacred word, before which 
one would think the most daring soul would tremble. 
"There be some," says Paul, "that would trouble 
you, perverting the gospel of Christ. But though 
we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other 
gospel than that which we have preached, let him 
be accursed." The other passage is that at the close 
of John's Revelation: "If any man shall add unto 
these things, God shall add unto him the plagues 
that are written in this book. And if any man shall 
take away from the words of the book of this pro- 
phecy, God shall take away his part out of the Book 
of Life." 

The revelations which God has given to us in 
regard to the day of judgment for mankind, are 
remarkably connected with information concerning 
two other grand subjects — namely, the judgment of 
the fallen angels, and the change or destruction of 
the material universe. The passages that teach 
these things are sublime and explicit ; they are like 
sudden bursts of thunder from heaven ; and being 
uttered, there they are left, and not a word is added ; 
— an example of solemn silence, full of awe. " If 
God spared not the angels that sinned," says Peter, 
"but cast them down to hell, and delivered them 
into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judg 



94 THE JUDGMENT. 

ment, the Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly 
out of temptation, and to reserve the unjust unto the 
day of judgment, to be punished." " The angels 
which kept not their first estate," says Jude, " but 
left their own habitation, He hath reserved in ever- 
lasting chains, under darkness, to the judgment of 
the great day." 

" Of old," says David, in the 102d Psalm, " hast 
Thou laid the foundation of the earth, and the 
heavens are the work of Thy hands. They shall 
perish, but Thou shalt endure ; yea, all of them shall 
wax old like a garment. As a vesture shalt Thou 
change them, and they shall be changed. But Thou 
art the same, and Thy years shall have no end." 
Now, in reference to those who denied or disbelieved 
such a coming change in the material universe, in 
connection with a general last judgment, Peter says 
that they are wilfully ignorant ; that the same 
heavens and earth which by the word of God were 
created, are by the same word kept in store, reserved 
unto fire, against the day of judgment, and perdition 
of ungodly men. 

ISTow, these things are such accompaniments or 
forerunners of the judgment, that of their infinite 
awfulness and sublimity we can have no possible 
adequate conception. By these heavens the psalmist 
meant all that the eye could reach, all that the human 
mind could know, of the expanse of rolling worlds. 

All this universe is to be burned up. " Lift up 
your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth 
beneath," exclaims Isaiah, in reference to this de- 
struction. Go forth of a starry evening, gaze upon 



THE JUDGMENT. 95 

the countless glittering orbs above, beneath, around 
your own small globe, and think of Jehovah as 
folding them all up together like a worn-out gar- 
ment, and whelming them in a universal sheet of 
fire ! It is a great triumph of faith to bring these 
things as realities within the scope, not only of our 
conception, but confident belief. The sacred writers 
seem to have had no more doubt upon these subjects 
than they had in regard to the simplest practical 
truths of the gospel ; indeed, they appeal to these 
tremendous revelations for reproof, for correction, 
for instruction in righteousness, just as they do to 
the plainest disclosures of man's responsibility. We 
can go no farther than the sacred writers ; but as far 
as they go, we are bound reverentially and solemnly 
to follow. 

On one of the most memorable and explicitly 
recorded occasions of Paul's preaching (that is, 
before Felix), it is said that he reasoned of righteous- 
ness, temperance, and judgment to come. The main 
body of his discourse seems to be here described ; 
and it is added, after mention of the judgment to 
come, that at that point in the sermon, Felix trembled. 
This was indeed one of those terrors of the Lord, 
with which the preachers of the gospel were in- 
structed by the Holy Spirit to knock at the door of 
men's hearts. " For we must all stand before the 
judgment-seat of Christ. Knowing, therefore, the 
terrors of the Lord, we persuade men." This re- 
corded sermon of Paul, or the brief note which we 
have of it, is a single illustration of the impressive 
style in which he and his fellow ministers of Christ 



96 THE JUDGMENT. 

labored for the awakening and salvation of an im- 
mortal soul. It had been given to Paul, according 
to tlie Eedeemer's promise, to know both what and 
how he ought to speak ; and under the guidance 
of that Divine inspiration, every thought and sen- 
tence of his discourse was conducted. He was to 
preach concerning the faith in Christ ; and, first of 
all, in the chariot of the terrors of the Lord, he drove 
directly at the conscience of Felix. No other mode 
of dealing would have been suitable for such an 
audience, even if it had not been Paul's habit, under 
the teaching of the Holy Spirit, thus to make the 
law a schoolmaster, to bring the soul to Christ. 
But Felix was a very bad man, and if fragrance and 
flowers would not win even a common sinner, or 
bring him to his senses, much more would it have 
been lost upon this Komano- Jewish Judge. He 
was a villain in state-robes and ermines ; and yet, 
the word of Grod, under Paul's management, did get 
hold upon him, and we doubt not, mainly by that 
power of the judgment to come. With what maj- 
esty and glory would Paul have demonstrated the 
claims of the Divine Law, and the nature of that 
holiness, without which no man shall see God. 
With what pungency to a guilty conscience would 
he have portrayed the self-denial and habitual purity 
of heart and life required by the Supreme Jehovah ! 
But if he had stopped there, probably the iron 
would not have entered into Felix's soul, although 
Felix knew in his inmost heart that he was himself 
a person of a manner of life right contrary to all 
that Paul had been insisting on. Yet men can very 



THE JUDGMENT. 97 

quietly listen to essays on the nature and the obli- 
gations of virtue and holiness, and the baseness of 
vice, and say amen to the whole of such a preach- 
ment, if you stop short of retribution and the ven- 
geance of eternal fire. The beauty of holiness and 
the ugliness of sin even the most sinful men admit. 
But Paul did not stop there, but drove on with his 
burning eloquence, and carried Felix pale and 
trembling into the eternal world, beneath the terrors 
of the Lord God of an eternal judgment. He rea- 
soned not only of righteousness and temperance, 
but of the judgment to come, where every trans- 
gression of God's holy law, should meet a just rec- 
ompense of reward. That tremendous judgment to 
come ! It is the first and only note we have, in the 
divine record, of any of Paul's sermons on that sub- 
ject. What would not the whole intellectual and 
Christian world give to have heard that sermon. 
Yet we can tell, pretty nearly, from Paul's own com- 
positions, in what style of argument and imagery 
he would have thundered with God's artillery upon 
the conscience. We need only to connect a few sen- 
tences from his own Epistles to show what must 
have been the tenor of his appeal on this solemn 
subject. " For the wrath of God is revealed from 
heaven against all unrighteousness and ungodliness 
of men. And we are sure, Oh Felix, that the judg- 
ment of God is according to truth against those who 
commit such things. And thinkest thou this, Oh 
man, who judgest them that do such things, and 
doest the same, that thou shall escape the judgment 
of God ? or despisest thou the riches of his goodness 

5 



98 THE JUDGMENT. 

and forbearance, and long suffering ; not knowing 
that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repent- 
ance? But after thy hardness and impenitent 
heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the 
day of wrath, and revelation of the righteous judg- 
ment of God. For he will render to every man ac- 
cording to his deeds ; to those who by patient con- 
tinuance in well doing, seek for glory and honor 
and immortality, eternal life ; but to those that 
obey not the truth, but obey unrighteousness, in- 
dignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon 
every soul of man that doeth evil. For is God un- 
righteous that taketh vengeance ? God forbid ! 
For then how shall God judge the world? Yea, 
and he will judge it with the righteous judgment of 
God, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from 
heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, tak- 
ing vengeance on them that know not God, and 
that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
who shall be punished with everlasting destruction 
from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory 
of his power, when he shall come to that devouring 
judgment." 

But all this reasoning of righteousness, temper- 
ance and judgment to come, was only preparatory, 
on Paul's part, at the door of Felix's conscience, for 
the introduction of the claims of the Saviour and 
the cross. He did not indeed begin with the cross, 
but grappled the law first upon the conscience of 
his hearer, preparatory to bringing the man to 
Christ Jesus. He seems to have thought that it 
would be but a waste of words to tell a heedless 



THE JUDGMENT. 99 

hardened hypocrite like the corrupt judge before 
him, of the character and claims of a Eedeemer, un- 
less he could convince the man of his own sin, and 
then he intended to have displayed the whole 
scheme and glory of the gospel, and the mercy of 
the Lord Jesus to the chief of sinners. And he 
would doubtless have gone on preaching Christ to 
Felix, had not Felix's impatience and procrastina- 
tion stopped him. When Felix began to tremble, 
the man certainly was not far from the kingdom of 
heaven. If he had cried out, Oh man of God, what 
shall I do to be saved, or if in silent anguish of soul 
at the view of his unveiled guilt and condemnation 
before Glod's law, he had humbly waited to hear of 
a crucified and forgiving Saviour, then might the 
result have been the triumphant conversion of the 
Jewish Judge, and his translation into the kingdom 
of heaven. But at the very first pangs of convic- 
tion, he broke up the whole audience ; he would 
stay to hear no longer, but concealing his sense of 
guilt and his terrors of conscience, he cried out, go 
thy way for this time ; when I have a convenient 
season I will call for thee. It was not so much 
procrastination, for it is doubtful if he had the least 
^design of recurring again to the subject ; but it was 
the sense of guilt, and the terror of conscience, 
under 'u Q is sudden and unexpected revelation of the 
judgment which he could not and would not en- 
dure. It is appointed unto men once to die, and 
after that the • judgment ; and that judgment was 
a power of the -v/orld to come, appalling and intol- 
erable to the guilty . sou ^- 



100 THE JUDGMENT. 

It always is. Next to the reality of eternity, rises 
that form of truth and justice on the soul, which 
stands in the gate of eternity — that reckoning with 
God — that discovery, decision, and judgment of 
character for an eternal destiny — that day of doom 
— that last decisive day! Once death; and after 
that, the judgment ! Death is a power of this world ; 
eternity and judgment are powers of the world to 
come. The idea of that day of doom receives its 
grandeur and its horror from the stupendous reality 
of that eternity to which it is the introduction ; and 
the idea of eternity itself, on the other hand, owes 
its solemnity and power over the conscience to the 
certainty of judgment, and an endless destiny in 
heaven or hell. Considering the interminable array 
of all that has passed in the guilty experience and 
history of the whole human race ; that it is all to be 
recovered, in all its personal relations, and to sweep 
again before the mind, beneath God's eye, in that 
day of doom ; and considering the certainty and in- 
finitude of what is to follow, the idea of judgment, 
next after that of God and eternity, is the mightiest, 
the most comprehensive, the most solemn and 
weighty, of all human ideas. All other conceptions 
of the mind are transitory and insignificant in the 
comparison. It is a power of the world to come 
which, when it once takes hold upon th;e sinful 
mind, fills it with an overmastering terror, that 
nothing but the hope of Christ's mer C y can allay. 
Under the conviction and dread of \ts nearness, the 
souls of men have often been stirre,"^ in great masses, 
with agitation, horror and d\ S may. Sometimes, 



THE JUDGMENT. 101 

whole cities Lave poured forth their inhabitants 
weeping, wailing, fainting, dying, at the very thought 
that the day of judgment was nigh ; sometimes, an 
earthquake, or the sun's eclipse, or any great portent 
of dissolving nature, such as we might suppose will 
usher in that day, has thrown a whole community 
into such prevailing and despotic fear, that all busi- 
ness has been suspended, all thoughts of earth and 
energies of mind have been paralysed, and men have 
stood shivering and pale in expectation. There have 
been seasons when men have anticipated daily the 
thunder of the trumpet that shall wake the dead. 

These mighty agitations show that this power of 
the world to come, this idea of the day of judgment, 
is as a ground- wave in men's convictions, and, when 
moved by the wind from eternity, sweeps everything 
before it. It is because we are a guilty race, and 
have a guilty, accusing conscience, and a sense of 
responsibility to God, and a foreboding of Divine 
justice ; it is because that day of judgment is be- 
lieved and known to be the day of doom, eternal, 
unalterable, according to the declaration of God, 
that we must all appear before the judgment-seat of 
Christ, that every one may receive the things done 
in his body, according to that he hath done, whether 
good or bad. Even where the light of Divine reve- 
lation has not reached, there has been this brooding 
sense of the judgment to come — sometimes more 
definite, sometimes less so, but always active and 
powerful, according to the activity of men's con- 
sciences. Yet men keep it at bay, as they do the 
devouring fire of conscience itself, which they ward 



102 THE JUDGMENT. 

off by an insensibility, sustained by their all-engross- 
ing devotion to the things seen and temporal. The 
things unseen and eternal are thus hidden, and kept 
out of view ; so that it is -wonderful to see how near 
men dwell upon the verge of them, and yet how 
distant they live from them — how far off they hold 
them — how dim and faint their thought and vision 
of them. And for this very neglect and strangeness, 
so much the more overwhelming is the terror with 
which these realities take hold upon the soul, when 
they suddenly advance upon it, and stand forth to 
the quickened imagination as just bursting on the 
world. The actual belief of the judgment, in its 
nearness, is a thing against which the soul cannot 
stand. It drops everything else, as a man engaged 
in a midnight robbery drops his spoil and flies, when 
the officers of justice break upon him. Confronted 
with the terrors of the Lord, it cannot endure them. 
If this day of doom were announced throughout 
the crowded city, as to break upon the world to- 
morrow, or next week, and men really believed it, 
who can describe the mighty change that would be 
effected ; the dropping of men's schemes of business 
and pleasure ; the relinquishment of their unrighteous 
and ill-gotten gains ; the abandonment of commerce ; 
the solemnity and loneliness of 'change ; the aston- 
ishment, anxiety and terror, that would sway the 
streets ; how men's hearts would fail them, and all 
faces would gather blackness, and many would go 
insane, and many would die, from the mere excess 
of sudden fright and conviction ! Yet now they are 
wholly at ease and quiet ; they dream on in their 



THE JUDGMENT. 103 

fancied security, dancing on the verge of doom, and 
this power of the world to come has as yet no grasp 
upon them. When Felix trembles, the god of this 
world is at hand to shield him from the truth ; he 
betakes himself to his merchandise, or rushes into 
the next night's ball, or draws around him the scenic 
shows of an opera, or busies himself deeper than 
ever in his successful worldly speculations. For 
thus, and with a mighty despotism of worldliness, 
the things seen and temporal intercept before the 
vision of the eternal. The fires are burning there, 
waiting there, the revelations and the fires of judg- 
ment ; and the midnight horizon of the soul some- 
times glows ruddy and wild with their light ; and 
the brooding, dreaming, restless, anxious thoughts 
reflect it, just as the low clouds gleam through the 
darkness in the fire of a distant conflagration. But 
still, because sentence against an evil work is not 
executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of 
men is fully set in them to do evil. 

Now in perfect correspondence with these mys- 
terious depths of man's nature, in which God seems 
to have set, as in the bottom fountain of a well, the 
deep reflection of some of heaven's profoundest 
truths, and from which we sometimes hear rolling 
up, as from subterranean gongs, the vast reverbera- 
tion of voices from the powers of the world to 
come ; in perfect correspondence with these buried, 
muttered thunderings of conscience, God has con- 
centrated, in the terms of His own revelation of this 
day of doom, some of the most solemn and mighti- 
est images of grandeur and glory. In correspond- 



104 THE JUDGMENT. 

ence with the regency, the kingly power in the soul, 
of this terrible consciousness of accountability to 
God, and of an advancing day of reckoning and 
retribution, God has invested its announcement with 
a dread array of images, of tempestuous magnifi- 
cence and sublimity. It reminds us of many pas- 
sages in Habbakuk and the Prophets, and the 
Psalms : Clouds and darkness, trembling and burn- 
ing mountains, the cleaving cataract-sound of many 
waters, the channels of the great deep upturned, 
lightnings and thunderings, hail-stones and coals of 
fire I Before him went the pestilence, and burning 
coals were under his feet. And he rode upon a 
cherub, and did fly ; yea, he did fly upon the wings 
of the wind. The wreathing smoke, the bickering 
flames, the arrowy darting fires, the bowing heavens, 
the pavilion of dark waters, the blast of the breath 
of his nostrils, the elements themselves on fire, and 
melting with fervent heat, the heavens dissolved, 
and worlds fleeing with a great noise from the face 
of God ; these are some of the draperies let fall be- 
fore the breaking of that Day. " I beheld in the 
night visions till the thrones were cast down, and 
the Ancient of Days did sit, whose garment was 
white as snow, and the hair of his head like the 
pure wool : his throne was like the fiery flame, and 
his wheels as burning fire. A fiery stream issued 
and came forth from before him ; the judgment was 
set, and the books were opened." " I saw a great 
white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose 
face the earth and the heaven fled away, and there 
was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, 



THE JUDGMENT. 105 

small and great, stand before God, and the books 
were opened, and the dead were judged out of those 
things which were written in the books, according 
to their works. And the sea gave up the dead 
which were in it, and death and hell delivered up 
the dead which were in them, and they were judged 
every man, according to their works." "And 
Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, 
Behold the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his 
saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to con- 
vince all that are ungodly among them of all their 
ungodly deeds, which they have ungodly com- 
mitted, and of all their hard speeches, which ungod- 
ly sinners have spoken against him." "Behold he 
cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see him, 
and they also that pierced him, and- all kindreds of 
the earth shall wail because of him." 

But of all the solemn references to that great 
Day, and descriptions of it, the one by our Blessed 
Lord, in the 25th chapter of Matthew, with its grave 
and awful minuteness and yet vastness of detail, is 
the most overwhelming. " When the Son of Man 
shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with 
him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory, 
and before him shall be gathered all nations ; and 
he shall separate them one from another, as a shep- 
herd divideth his sheep from the goats. And he 
shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats 
on the left. Then shall the King say to them on 
his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, in- 
herit the kingdom prepared for you from the foun- 
dation of the world. Then shall he say also unto 



106 THE JUDGMENT. 

them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, 
into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his 
angels. And these shall go away into everlasting 
punishment, but the righteous into life eternal." 

And these things are near us, pressing, crowding 
upon us. Only death keeps them off ; once death, 
then the judgment. How strange it is that we can, 
with so little effort, put these realities so far from 
us, that in effect, if there were an Eternity between 
them and us, we could hardly be less excited by 
them ! The things present and temporal are set by 
us as a screen before the things unseen and eternal. 
Oh that God would mercifully, by his grace, break 
up this blinding habit, remove our insensibility, 
and inspire within us that daily and perpetual faith, 
which shall be in us " the victory that overcometh 
the world !" 

In the admirable writings of Jane Taylor there is 
a poem entitled, " The World in the Heart." It is 
a beautiful and searching chapter in the christian 
conflict, and in some of its lines the nearness of the 
things eternal is presented with a solemn and start- 
ling impressiveness ; and the sense of that nearness 
is truly described as an experience, of which the 
most careless minds are not always destitute, though 
alas, in most cases, it is transitory and ineffectual, 
the soul being careful and troubled about many 
other things. The world in the heart is a dread- 
fully successful barricade against the powers of the 
world to come. 

And yet, amid the hurry, toil, and strife, 
The claims, the urgencies, the whirl of life, — 



THE JUDGMENT. 107 

The soul — perhaps in silence of the night — 

Has flashes, transient intervals of light ; 

When things to come, without a shade of doubt, 

In terrible reality stand out. 

Those lucid moments suddenly present 

A glance of truth, as though the heavens were rent ; 

And through that chasm of pure celestial light 

The future breaks upon the startled sight. 

Life's vain pursuits, and Time's advancing pace, 

Appear, with death-bed clearness, face to face, 

And Immortality's expanse sublime, 

In just proportion to the speck of Time ; 

"While Death, uprising from the silent shades, 

Shows his dark outline ere the vision fades. 

In strong relief against the blazing sky 

Appears the shadow, as it passes by ; 

And though o'erwhelming to the dazzled brain, 

Those are the moments when the mind is sane. 

For then, a hope of Heaven, — the Saviour's cross, 

Seem what they are, and all things else but loss. 

Oh, to be ready ! ready for that day ! 

Would we not give earth's fairest toys away ? 

Alas ! how soon its interests cloud the view, 

Rush in, and plunge us in the world anew ! 



^ffirmattmts of Cmtsdetta in nkxmt 

There is a sense of the future judgment in the 
heart. Every sinful being is conscious of it. There 
is no sin ever committed, but it carries with it a 
monition, a prediction, — I shall meet that sin again. 
The mind travels forward, with the speed of 
thought, to the time when all things shall pass in 
review. The consideration of that review may not 
always be distinct in the consciousness ; nay, there 
may be, there almost always is, a shrinking back 
from the idea of the future judgment, an attempt to 
avoid its acknowledgment. Men avoid looking in 
the face the thought which nevertheless springs up 
in the soul, For all these things God will bring thee 
into judgment. If this declaration of God's word, 
echoed as it is in the depths of men's being, were 
listened to seriously, it would prevent a great many 
sins. A man is engaged in some sinful indulgence, 
pursuing some unholy train of thought, prosecuting 
some wrong enterprise, committing some unlawful 
action, perhaps simply making some malicious or 
ill-natured remarks. Meantime there is a murmur, 
sometimes distinct, sometimes indistinct, going on 



AFFIRMATIONS OF CONSCIENCE. 109 

in his conscience. If now he would stop and listen, 
and while he listens, think what conscience is speak- 
ing and meaning, it would often arrest the evil ; if 
he would say, when conscience murmurs, Speak 
louder ! What were you saying ? There is often 
this threatful muttering in a man's being, this sup- 
pressed rebellion of his moral sense, when he does 
not notice it, or rather, he is so accustomed to dis- 
regard it, to give it, as we say, the " go by," that he 
lets it sound on, and it makes no abiding impression. 
Just so, externally, persons become accustomed to 
the noise of a factory, though the whirring of the 
machinerv, when it is heard for the first time, is 
quite stunning. So persons on the sea-shore be- 
come accustomed to the roar of ocean, and it ceases 
to excite notice, whilst persons from the inland are 
filled by it with the most sublime impressions. 

But we easily become more accustomed and in- 
sensible to the motions of our inward being, than 
our external senses do to external sounds. Amidst 
sin, or sinful indulgence, we do not like to listen to 
the voice of conscience, and would rather she would 
speak in indistinct murmurings, than in clear tones. 
But if men would attend to what is going on within 
them, a' great deal of sin and misery might often be 
saved. It requires a great deal of hardihood and 
obduracy to look conscience distinctly in the face, 
and with her eye, like that of Grod, upon you, pro- 
ceed to the very sin against which she warns you. 
Let a man's attention in such a case be wholly given 
to his conscience, and it will stay his sin. But the 
attention in such a case is so occupied with the sin, 



110 AFFIRMATIONS OF CONSCIENCE 

that the face of conscience is hidden, and the voice 
of conscience, though it sounds on, is like a whisper 
in the presence of a cataract. But when the noise 
of passion has subsided, then the sound of con- 
science for a season is awfully clear; when the 
crime is committed, the soul is at leisure to attend 
to itself; then at once it hears the judgment now 
past, and remembers the warning before given. 

Now if men would beforehand attend to con- 
science as they do afterwards, it would make a great 
difference in their conduct. If every man, in pur- 
suing a course which he doubts or suspects is 
wrong, if every man, in entering into temptation, 
would let conscience speak out, would attend to her 
uneasy moanings, and would say, What is it? 
Speak, for I will listen ; then, that indistinct feeling 
of condemnation, indistinct in the presence of pas- 
sion, but awfully distinct in the remembrance, 
would become clear, loud, alarming. The indis- 
tinct idea of sin, of God, and of the judgment, 
would become as if an angel had stood in your 
way, and had said, This is wrong, God sees you, for 
this there will be judgment. 

The voice of conscience always speaks with refer- 
ence to the judgment. The voice of conscience is 
not merely condemnatory, but prophetic. It is not 
merely by the present sense of sin that conscience 
acts so powerfully, but by the sense of a coming 
condemnation. Conscience is a prophetic miniature 
of the judgment, in that inward court which she 
holds in the soul. God will bring thee into judg- 
ment, God will bring thee into judgment ; this is 



IN REFERENCE TO THE JUDGMENT. Ill 

what she is evermore repeating; this constitutes 
her sanction, the foundation of her power. This is 
the essence of all those forebodings, those gloomy 
presentiments, that sometimes fill the souls of wicked 
men, and which they vainly strive to dissipate. 
There is sometimes a state in the sinner's soul like 
that chill rawness in the atmosphere, which pre- 
cedes a wintry storm ; there is a gloomy shivering, 
when there are, as yet, no clouds ; the guilty mind 
may hear the distant moaning of the storm, when 
as yet it has not darkened the horizon. It is a 
striking expression in the scriptures in regard to 
the wicked, that a dreadful sound is in their ears. 
It is there, whether they attend to it or not, just as 
the roar of ocean is still there, though men living 
by the sea-side cease to notice it. 

"Wicked men so accustom themselves to live upon 
the borders of the ocean of eternity, and to dance 
and trifle on its shores, listening only to the music 
of their own sins, that the sounds that come across 
it are scarcely ever attended to. And yet, there it 
is before them, the ocean of eternity, and a sense of 
it is always brooding over the mind, and there is 
sometimes a consciousness of it. Sometimes the 
sense of it is like a night-mare upon the soul, for 
which men know not how to account. Sometimes 
their indistinct sense of what is buried in the future 
pursues them into the midst of their busiest occupa- 
tions, their most absorbing pleasures, and the worm 
of conscience is gnawing away in secret, when 
there is the consuming care of gain, or the flush of 
wine, or the excitement of the dance upon the coun- 



112 AFFIRMATIONS OF CONSCIENCE 

tenance. Many men have these seasons, who never 
tell of them ; hear this dreadful sonnd, who never 
mention it to others. I doubt not that sometimes 
professed infidels have written their works beneath 
this brooding sense of indistinct avenging evil in 
Eternity. There was something in the very bosoms 
of Hume and Voltaire, that was always giving the 
lie to their own pages. 

Sometimes, when such men come near to death, 
the cloud is all lifted, a lurid light strikes through 
it, the inward eye sees far out over the ocean of 
eternity, the inward ear is rendered keenly and 
painfully sensitive to the tempest sounds that come 
booming and wailing across it. Sometimes even 
great and hardened sinners enter into the shades of 
avenging retribution before they die. We have 
seen a man of great powers of mind, great exper- 
ience in guilty pleasure, great contempt for religion, 
great wit and richness of intellect in conversation, 
beneath a gloom so deep under the hand of disease, 
that we could scarcely doubt that the images of the 
despised future were busy with him ; the spirits 
with which his evil life had peopled the eternal 
world were beginning to return upon him, to peer 
in through the darkness of his infidelity, to show 
their dreadful faces, and to wake up the snakes 
in his own heart, coiled in his conscience. We 
shall never forget the expression of that man's 
countenance, as we once saw him gazing into the 
pale face of a dead man, a former companion of his 
pleasures, carried beneath the window in a coffin. 
How often, when we little think it, are the wicked 



IN REFERENCE TO THE JUDGMENT. 113 

like the troubled sea, whose waters cast up mire and 
dirt ! 

A very graphic writer describes an interview 
with an imprisoned murderer, who, at the close of 
the conversation, "folded his arms, leaned back 
against the wall, and appeared to sink gradually 
into one of his reveries. I looked him in the face, 
and spoke to him, but he did not seem either to 
hear or see me. His mind was perhaps wandering 
in that dreadful valley of the shadow of death, into 
which the children of earth, while living, occasion- 
ally find their way; that dreadful region where 
there is no water, where hope dwelleth not, where 
nothing lives but the undying worm. This valley 
is the fac-simile of hell, and he who has entered it, 
has experienced here on earth, for a time, what the 
spirits of the condemned are doomed to suffer 
through ages without end." 

It is a fearful thing to see a man passing through 
that valley, beset by the fiends in it, his sins having 
found him out and fastened upon him. But if it is 
dreadful to see another in it, how much more 
dreadful to experience it ! And yet, perhaps insen- 
sibility is worse. It has sometimes been witnessed. 
A notice of the death of Hume, by a thoughtful and 
masterly observer sets the fearfulness of such insen- 
sibility in great solemnity before us. " We behold 
him," says John Foster, " appointed soon to appear 
before that Judge, to whom he had never alluded 
but with malice or contempt; yet preserving to 
appearance an entire self-complacency, idly jesting 
about his approaching dissolution, and mingling 



114 AFFIRMATIONS OF CONSCIENCE 

with the insane sport his references to the fall of 
superstition, a term of which the meaning is hardly 
ever dubious, when expressed by such men. We 
behold him at last carried off, and we seem to hear, 
the following moment, from the darkness in which 
he vanishes, the shriek of surprise and terror, and 
the overpowering accents of the messenger of 
vengeance. On the whole globe there probably 
was not acting, at the time, so mournful a tragedy, 
as that of which the friends of Hume were the 
spectators, without being aware that it was any 
tragedy at all." 

How dreadful to face death with conscience for an 
enemy ! In such a position, how powerfully does 
conscience act with reference to the judgment ! 
What instruction may be gathered from the keen 
desire of restitution for fraud and injustice, some- 
times evinced on a dying bed, and often also in a 
season of health, beneath powerful conviction of sin ! 
It seems as if the soul could not die beneath a sense 
of injustice to others, unconfessed and unatoned for. 
The soul often seeks atonement in restitution. But 
who shall make restitution to God for a life of in- 
justice, ingratitude, injury towards him? And if 
fraud and wrong towards a fellow-creature can so 
afflict and torture the soul, when it comes to be 
remembered and felt even in this world, what will be 
the misery produced by a sight and sense of sin in 
eternity as committed against God? 

The doctrine of the atonement once revealed, it 
does not seem possible that any man who believes 
in a future judgment, and has ever looked into his 






IN KEFERENCE TO THE JUDGMENT. 115 

own heart, can have the hardihood to reject so divine 
a truth. Accordingly we find that with its denial, 
men have coupled the disbelief of the judgment, 
and the denial of a future endless retribution. 
Perhaps we ought to say, the attempt at such disbe- 
lief, for every man's own moral constitution makes 
him a believer, however unwilling. And when a 
man looks over his own life, and into his own heart, 
and begins to realise in some measure the nature of 
that revelation, which is to take place in eternity, 
What can he do ? There is no reparation that he 
can make, no restitution that he can offer to Grod. 
But with infinite power of consolation to a wounded 
conscience the divine reality of the atonement rises 
on the soul. Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh 
away the sin of the world ! 






Lsr one of the sea-side sermons by our blessed 
Lord, beneath the unclouded sky and sweet, open 
air of Judea, He told the people (and the Omniscience 
of God, the meanwhile, seemed brooding upon them, 
in the all-surrounding transparency of cloudless 
light) that "there was nothing hid that should not 
be manifested, neither anything kept secret, but that 
it should come abroad." 

Two propositions are contained in this disclosure. 
The first is, that there is nothing hid which shall not 
be manifested; the second, that the purpose for 
which anything, for a time, is kept secret — the reason 
why such temporary secresy is permitted, is, that it 
shall come abroad. We could not have known 
either of these propositions, had not He who knoweth 
all things revealed them to us. They embrace a 
great universe of truth ; the nature of our probation 
and accountability ; the certainty of a future judg- 
ment ; the justification of God's present government, 
under which so many crimes seem to go concealed 
and unpunished ; and the fact, that these things are 
permitted now, only to be revealed and set right 
hereafter. Had not God taught us this truth, and 



DISCLOSURES OF THE JUDGMENT. 117 

made us thus to look into futurity, we should have 
supposed that many things might forever remain 
unknown, except to the beings who transacted them ; 
or, at any rate, that thoughts, purposes and feelings, 
inscrutable by mortal sight, might remain eternally 
hidden from mortal knowledge. But God tells us 
that there is nothing hid which shall not be mani- 
fested ; and this proposition extends to the thoughts 
and intents of the heart, and leaves nothing, either 
of event or motive, out of its circle. All things shall 
be manifested, shall be made manifest, shall come 
abroad, shall be introduced to others' knowledge. 
All things are known to God, and cannot be other- 
wise ; but they shall also be made known to others. 
There is no place of concealment, and no such thing 
as concealment, in the universe. 

In the first place, there is a sense in which there 
is nothing, even in the counsels and works of God, 
which shall not be manifested by Him, for His glory. 
All things were planned and made for the display 
of His perfections ; and even as it pleases, and when 
it pleases, the great and glorious Sovereign of the 
universe, the veil shall be taken from them, and they 
shall be known. The strength and acuteness of 
reason in God's intelligent creatures shall be em- 
ployed in searching out His works and ways forever ; 
a blessed employment, which, by reason of the in- 
finitude and incomprehensibility of God's perfections, 
must be eternal. And God will forever make such 
manifestations of Himself to all holy beings as will 
forever increase their glory and blessedness. 

But, in the second place, and in a more absolute, 



118 DISCLOSUKES OF THE JUDGMENT. 

unlimited sense, there is nothing out of God, nothing 
in His creatures, now hidden, which shall not be 
manifested; there is nothing in the counsels and 
works of man, nothing thought, nothing spoken, 
nothing acted, in secresy, in darkness, which shall 
not be made known. No length of time, nor depth 
of loneliness, is any security of concealment. No 
oblivion can cover a single transaction, either inward 
or external ; no interval of forgetfulness can banish 
one circumstance, or dim or wear away one past 
reality, or diminish its brightness. And thoughts are 
realities more eternal than things. Thoughts lead 
to things, give birth to them, and dwell forever with 
them ; and neither thought nor thing can be anni- 
hilated, or its trace perish. Ages on ages might roll 
on, and no remembrance occur, no association bring 
it up, no indication take place, by which the exist- 
ence of such a fact might be dreamed or suspected ; 
but having once been, it is eternal ; and when it is 
renewea in the mind, the present and the past con- 
sciousness shall be brought together, and made as 
distinctly and clearly one, as if no interval of time 
had elapsed. It shall be as if a vacuum between 
two objects were removed — as if two leaves of a 
book, that had been torn asunder, and removed to 
distant and different quarters of the globe, had been 
brought together, there being no interruption of the 
sense by that removal. There is no more separation 
of the mind's identity and consciousness from any 
thought or event in its past existence, whatever in- 
terval of time may have elapsed, or different expe- 
rience ensued, though it were whole ages, than there 



DISCLOSUEES OF THE JUDGMENT. 119 

would be between the sense of these words, on the 
bottom of a page in John's gospel, " The hour is 
coming, in the which all;" and those words that begin 
the next page, " That are in the graves shall hear His 
voice" — than there would be between these two pro- 
positions, if you were to tear these words asunder, 
and carry the last without the first into Asia Minor. 
Whenever these words are brought again together, 
the whole sense again is as perfect as if they never 
were separated ; and so it is with the mind's identity 
and consciousness. 

The past can no more be separated from the pre- 
sent, than the present from the future. A thing 
may for the present be forgotten, but it cannot be 
lost, being an eternal possession of the mind, a tran- 
saction of its stewardship, for which account must 
be given. It may be buried in utter forgetfulness, 
nearly the whole span of a man's life ; but the 
smallest, most trivial association may reproduce it. 
Sometimes the mind suddenly and unaccountably 
goes back and lives over again in perfect freshness 
a scene of its past being, not remembered for years. 
A mote in. the sunbeam, an odor wafted on the 
wind, a tone in the voice, a strain of music, a fall- 
ing leaf, the shape of a cloud, the title of a book, 
the glance of an eye, the song of a bird, a color in 
the sky, may bring it all up at once, without an 
effort of the will, or a thought that seemed leading 
to it. There may have been that in the scene, 
which the soul would fervently wish could be an- 
nihilated; there may have been that, which is of 
such a nature, that the soul itself would rather now 



120 DISCLOSUEES OF THE JUDGMENT. 

be itself annihilated, than dwell with the remem- 
brance of it. But involuntarily, unsought for, in 
spite of will, wishes, fears, up it comes. A man 
can trace no magic circle for his being, within which 
the past shall not intrude ; within which he can 
stand in safety, and stretch his wand of power, and 
say to the pale ghosts of his sins flocking towards 
him from the darkness, Keep off! They will not 
mind him, and sometimes they seem to come crowd- 
ing and shoaling towards him all at once, struggling 
for the mastery. He can separate himself from no 
past frame or experience, habit or action, thought 
or result, of his being. Neither the evil nor the 
good can be forgotten. In this sense also the words 
of Ecclesiastes are true, The thing that hath been, it 
is that which shall be ; unto the place from whence 
the rivers come, thither they return again. 

More than three thousand years ago a handful of 
grain was deposited in an Egyptian tomb. More 
than three thousand years passed away, and the 
buried grain was discovered. It had all the ger- 
minating properties of life hidden within it, and 
when, after this long interval, it was planted in a 
garden in London, it sprang up, and produced its 
appropriate harvest. So it is with buried, hidden, 
forgotten thoughts and things. They never die, 
never can die. They may be entombed with the 
dead, but they never lose their vitality. They may 
pass out of the consciousness, and be forgotten ; but 
they are to be sown again, and to bring forth their 
fruit for weal or woe, in the mind, in eternity. 

This is the security, from the nature of the human 



DISCLOSURES OF THE JUDGMENT. 121 

mind, fearfully and wonderfully made, for the ful- 
filment of this assurance, that there is nothing con- 
cealed which shall not be manifested. A man's 
being is a chain of experiences coiled up, and coil- 
ing on, every link indissolubly connected with the 
preceding, so that it cannot, in any part, be severed, 
and so that, if you have one link in hand, you are 
sure of all. And a man's own self is to go back 
step by step and uncoil this chain, and examine 
every link of it, and hold it up to the light, and it 
is to be seen how it was forged, from what furnace 
in the mind, by what process of the will, with what 
moral and mortal tempering and hardening. 

But there is a higher security of manifestation 
than this, and that is, the purpose and word of the 
living God. Neither was anything kept secret, but 
that it should come abroad. It is kept secret, only in 
order to come abroad. Nothing would be kept 
secret, suffered to be hidden, were not that (rod's de- 
sign. There is this inscription on every hidden 
thing, To be manifested. Therefore it is safe, it can- 
not be lost. The very fact that it is hidden makes 
it sure to come abroad. There is a particular in- 
surance from God upon it, that makes it more safe 
from forgetfulness and loss, than if it had been trans- 
acted in open day, and were among the known 
things of a past eternity. There is a superior cer- 
tainty, over the chaos of things that have been 
known, connected with those that are unknown, of 
being brought out into the light ; for that is the 
particular design with which God put them by, as 
it were, and suffered them to pass into oblivion. 

6 



122 DISCLOSUKES OF THE JUDGMENT. 

Whatever remains concealed, God's purpose is con- 
nected with, such concealment, and that is as if 
every such concealed thing or thought were labelled, 
and written in a book, catalogued, numbered, with 
place, time, circumstance, to be brought up at the 
great appointed day. There is such a book; the 
fires of the last day cannot consume the record. 
" For God shall bring every work into judgment, 
with every secret thing, whether it be good, or 
whether it be evil." 

And now as to the purpose of God in permitting 
such secresy for a season, some things are plain. 
Many things are kept secret, in order that they may 
be completed, the purpose of the agent fully re- 
vealed, and so far as God permits it, accomplished. 
If there were not this possibility of present secresy, 
men could hardly be said to be free agents. Doubt- 
less, then, it is partly for the development of char- 
acter, that God permits evil to be concealed, and the 
wicked to go unpunished. A man who will sin, 
though he knows the eye of God is on him, merely 
because his fellow-beings do not see him, is essen- 
tially wicked. A man who will sin against his own 
conscience and knowledge of truth and righteous- 
ness, though neither God nor man should see him, 
or because he alone sees himself, is essentially 
wicked. A man who would refrain from sin, be- 
cause men see him, while he would not, if God only 
saw him, is essentially wicked. God will let men 
therefore for the present, play the hypocrite ; he 
will let men's inward wickedness develop itself, 
while they say, no eye seeth me. He will try what 



DISCLOSUEES OF THE JUDGMENT. 123 

men are. He will see what a man is, alone ; lie 
will let hirn think he is alone ; he will let him for- 
get God, and act out his evil nature, that the uni- 
verse also may see what he is, alone. So things are 
kept secret, in order to be revealed. A daguerreo- 
type is formed, and can only be formed, in the dark- 
ness ; that is, the plate must be shut from the sur- 
rounding light, and receive only the light transmit- 
ted from the person to be taken, in order that when 
it is produced, it may bear, without blur or dimness, 
the lineaments of the face it has reflected. If the 
light were let in upon it, the process would be 
stopped ; there would be no picture. So it is in 
some respects with men's characters in their de- 
velopment. 

Secresy is often essential to the commission of 
crime, and essential to the production of evidence in 
regard to men's character. How many a villainy 
would have been stopped, how many a sin crushed 
in the bud, how many a fraud or murder arrested, 
if there had been a single eye known to be in the 
room, on the face, on the hand, on the paper. If 
the first concoction of evil plans were seen in their 
commencement, in their originating steps, there are 
comparatively few that would be finished. Some 
persons indeed, in great power and boldness, sweep 
on in their career of evil, regardless with what 
transparency the world may see their motives. But 
in general men cannot accomplish their schemes of 
selfishness, without concealment. And in this 
world many a crime goes unpunished for want of 
evidence. There will be evidence enough in the 



124 DISCLOSURES OF THE JUDGMENT. 

eternal world. Every murderer, who thinks he has 
removed every witness of his crime, has only sent 
the witnesses out of this world into the next, out of 
the porch or ante-room into the judgment hall itself. 
He has only sent forward the evidence, by which he 
is to be tried. Every man who has secretly injured 
or defrauded another, has had the fraud or the in- 
jury inscribed and catalogued for eternity. Every 
man who has neglected prayer, neglected the word 
of God, neglected his own soul, has had the neglect, 
every instance of it, not only written down in the 
book of his own conscience and memory, but 
checked as it were, in the record of things to be 
manifested in eternity. Every man, every day, is 
filling up his character. God keeps a book of char- 
acter. Every thought, every act, goes into it; 
every attitude of the moral being. The book is 
filled up, in order that its great leaves may be un- 
folded and read for the knowledge of the universe ; 
that all may see what man is, what God is ; that 
every mouth may be stopped, and all the world 
plead guilty before God ; that man may be seen in 
the greatness, wilfulness, and inexcusableness of his 
depravity, God in the holiness and justice of his 
punishment. The more secrecy, hypocrisy, and 
successful wickeness there is here, the more clearly 
will the justice of the condemnation of the wicked 
appear hereafter. 

It may be that secresy in sin is often permitted in 
mercy. God does not keep secret His own expostu- 
lating and restraining words and influences; He 
sends them abroad, pours them upon sinful minds 



DISCLOSURES OF THE JUDGMENT. 125 

and consciences, hedges up the path of the sinner 
with them, to turn him from destruction to repent- 
ance. But he often permits men's sins to remain 
secret, so that they may come to a hearty repentance 
before God, and not be shut out from society, or 
from paths of usefulness, by the wide-spread knowl- 
edge of guilt. God conceals every man's heart 
from every man ; for the heart is deceitful above all 
things and desperately wicked, so that none but God 
can know it. Hence the apostle says, Some men's 
sins are open beforehand, going before to judgment, 
and some they follow after. Likewise also the good 
works of some are manifest beforehand, and they 
that are otherwise cannot be hid. Some sins are so 
plain, so glaring, that they carry the thoughts at once 
to the bar of God, and spectators are led irresistibly 
to speak of the fearful account that must be ren- 
dered ; and such sins are as swift reporting messen- 
gers sent onward to the judgment. Other sins are 
not fully completed, till after the author of them has 
gone to his grave; the results of them are not 
developed, the purposes of them not accomplished ; 
but as fast as they are, so fast the witnesses of them 
travel on after the author, to overtake him in the 
eternal world. 

The witnesses against some men, we have reason 
to believe, will thus be crowding into the eternal 
world to the end of time, the indictment against 
them not being filled up till the last result of their 
iniquity is developed. A man, for example, who 
writes an immoral, but immortal book, may be 
tracked into eternity by a procession of lost souls 



126 DISCLOSUEES OF THE JUDGMENT. 

from every generation, every one of them to be a 
witness against him at the judgment, to show to 
him and to the universe the immeasurable dreadful- 
fulness of his iniquity. A man whose teachings 
or whose influence remain behind him for evil, 
does in a solemn sense remain sinning in this world, 
long after his soul has gone forward into the land 
of spirits. And it must be an awful reception which 
such a man gives to the witnesses of his guilt, as 
they come into his company, covered with the 
mantle of his sins, filled with the element of perdi- 
tion ministered by his soul to theirs. It may have 
been the dread of that, that made the rich man in 
his torments beseech father Abraham to send Laz- 
arus to testify unto his five brethren, lest they also 
should come into that place^of torment. 

But the good works of good men are as immortal 
as the bad works of evil men. They, too, are swift 
messengers, but bright celestial ones, before the 
throne of God in judgment. They, too, come troop- 
ing into the eternal world as witnesses, long after 
the authors of them have entered on their reward. 
And who can tell the blessedness of such men as 
Baxter, Bunyan, Doddridge, Flavel and others, when 
they see, generation after generation, the results and 
marks of their own earthly labors, in souls that 
follow after them to glory. No good that they have 
done can ever be hid. Not a cup of cold water 
given to a disciple, nor a widow's mite put into 
Christ's treasury, nor a penitent tear, nor a fervent, 
faithful prayer, nor any thought or deed of self- 
denying love, but is recorded in the book of life, 



DISCLOSUKES OF THE JUDGMENT. 127 

and sends on its witness for the great day. " Blessed 
are the dead who die in the Lord ! Yea saith Spirit, 
for they rest from their labors, and their works do 
follow them." 

The pursuit of this subject teaches us most im- 
pressively what a solemn world we live in. We 
seem to walk by ourselves, we are often alone with 
ourselves, and there is no window in our bosoms, 
through which men can look into the recesses of 
our hearts and see what is going on there. But 
there is no such thing as absolute concealment. 
Our deeds are all done, our characters all formed, 
in open light. There is no such thing as darkness. 
What appears darkness to us is light to God, and 
every thought and every thing, every feeling, every 
action, is thrown from us into the light. How 
solemn, how beautiful, are the declarations in the 
scriptures : " Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, 
our secret sins in the light of thy countenance. If 
I say surely the darkness shall cover me, even the 
night shall be light about me. For the darkness 
hideth not from thee, but the light shineth as the day. 
The darkness and the light are both alike to thee. 
Can any hide himself in secret places, that I shall 
not see him, saith the Lord ? There is no darkness 
nor shadow of death where the workers of iniquity 
may hide themselves. Mine eyes are upon all their 
ways, neither is their iniquity hid from mine eyes." 

And if it is hid now, for a season, from the uni- 
verse, it is only because it shall be revealed when 
God pleases. So with every thing, whether good or 
evil, the one just as indestructible, indelible, uncon- 



128 DISCLOSURES OF THE JUDGMENT. 

cealable as the other. If we ever think or act in 
the darkness, it is for the light. As rockets are 
shot into the sky, to explode and blaze there, so our 
thoughts, words, deeds, shoot into the eternal world, 
to have their development there, but not like the 
transitoriness of a meteor in the evening sky. The 
good thoughts, the good deeds, the good words of 
good men will shine in the firmament of their own 
consciousness and remembrance, and in the light of 
a Saviour's love, forever. The evil thoughts, evil 
deeds, evil words of the wicked will be as baleful, 
everlasting fires, darting from every quarter their 
corrosive influence. So the good man shall be 
satisfied from himself, and the wicked shall be filled 
with his own mischief. In the light of eternity, 
under the disclosures there, every being need only 
be left to the unrestrained development of the 
character with which he went out of this world 
into that, and this would be enough to constitute 
everlasting happiness or misery. The seeds are 
sown, the elements established in this world. Say 
ye to the righteous that it shall be well with him, for 
they shall eat the fruit of their doings. "Woe to the 
wicked, it shall be ill with him, for the reward of 
his hands shall be given him. 

And here let the solemnity of these principles be 
noted, as to our sins of omission, and let any man, 
the most careless, the most hardened, ask himself if 
he is prepared to meet the revelation of them. Our 
negative life, or what we call such, is as determined 
in its moral character as our most positive ; and in 
the light of that great declaration of God, To him 



DISCLOSURES OF THE JUDGMENT. 129 

that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it 
is sin, our negative life may sometimes be the 
guiltiest of all our existence. When the universal 
stewardship is reckoned, for which God is to hold 
every man to his account, it is not perhaps the ques- 
tion, What have you done with your talents, your 
wealth, your opportunities? that will prove the 
severest trial to the soul, but, What have you neg- 
lected to do, failed to do, refused to do, or left un- 
done, that you had the time and occasion given you 
to accomplish ? It is this last question that in most 
cases will work the greatest revelation of guiltiness, 
and the greatest remorse and woe. 

Alas ! too often it is the emptiest hours, the most 
unmarked, that most upbraid us. Where are the 
many days, almost a blank in our existence, that 
might have been filled, or marked at least, with 
memories of prayer, with thoughts of God, and as- 
pirations deep and earnest after heaven, with efforts 
to do good, however baffled, and voices of suppli- 
cating sorrow, even amidst defeat? Alas! they 
have gone sinfully vacant to the judgment, even as 
the case from which the jewel has been stolen is 
reserved to prove the theft. Of many of our days, 
we can tender to God, as of a wasted talent, only 
the folded napkin. Each day is as a vase, a 
precious crystal vase, bestowed of God to be filled 
with grace from His own fountain, with living 
water from His own throne, with some precious 
treasures of words and deeds of love, and sweet op- 
portunities, not utterly neglected but usefully em- 
ployed. Each day should bring something to God, 



130 DISCLOSUKES OF THE JUDGMENT. 

the precious vase, with, some little offering, though 
it were but a cup of cold water, or a publican's 
prayer. God gives it whole ; but every day, in the 
careless, prayerless, godless man's life, returns it 
empty, broken. But for every empty and every 
wasted day, thou must give account to Him. 

We are taught the prayer of the psalmist, that 
God would make us sensible of our hidden sins; but 
from ourselves a great many things are concealed, 
not by the darkness, but the glare of light. A great 
master of thought and style in our English tongue 
once likened the realities of our moral being not re- 
vealed as yet, to the stars, invisible by day, but which 
are only waiting for the obscuring daylight to be 
withdrawn. He employed that phrase in reference 
to the repressed and hidden thoughts, memories, and 
possessions of the mind, brought suddenly into view 
in an hour of darkness and of judgment, like the 
dying moments of a drowning man. Then, all the 
past of life rises from its obscurity into clear and 
awful light. Now, the distractions, the gaieties, the 
business and brightness, of our daily worldly exist- 
ence, hide us from ourselves, and make most men 
more ignorant of their very selves, their own real 
character in the sight of God, than they are of the 
most abstruse of the sciences. In such ignorance 
there may be a sullen peace at present, there may 
be calmness and stupidity of conscience, but only 
while this ignorance lasts. But when the distracting 
and obscuring shows of this world die from the 
vision ; when the light from things seen and tem- 
poral, that now veils and obscures the unseen 



DISCLOSURES OF THE JUDGMENT. 131 

and eternal, shall be drawn away, then will all that 
we are not, in comparison with God's standard of all 
that we onght to be, and all that we are; in compari- 
son with God's standard of all that we ought not to 
be, become insufferably clear. How dreadful must 
be that inevitable revelation of sin in all the life, 
and of guilt within the soul, to the man of gaiety 
and pleasure, who never in this world would admit 
the indictment of God's word against him ; to the 
fools that danced through life, making a mock at 
sin ; and to all those who never here, amidst their 
round of amusement and pursuit, would look either 
at God's word or their own hearts long enough to 
see and feel their real character in God's sight ! 

And who, when that revelation takes place, can 
meet God without a Saviour? What, even now, 
can the dying sinner do, when it pleases God to draw 
aside the obscuring veil, to set his sins in array 
before him, and to give him some insight into the 
deep and dread reality of the character he has 
formed, while living without God and without prayer 
in the world ? He can do nothing but despair, were 
it not that, just at this place and condition of utter 
guilt and irremediable ruin, Christ Jesus interposes. 
And here, to the Cross of Christ, this subject brings 
us all ; for, apart from Him, what can we do, when 
God makes us known to ourselves, as He himself 
knows us ? He has set our iniquities before Him, 
our secret sins in the light of His countenance ; and 
what refuge can there be, when they are so set before 
us, so illustrated by the holy eye of God, if Jesus 
Christ have been rejected by us? It is the partial 



132 DISCLOSUKES OF THE JUDGMENT. 

illustration that God now gives, and the partial con- 
viction of sin which follows, in minds not utterly 
hardened, th,at reveals, and was intended to reveal, 
both the solemnity and terror of the judgment, and 
the necessity of the cross. 

And while this power of the world to come shows 
the need of just such a Saviour, and just such a 
salvation from sin, as are brought to us in the gospel, 
it also shows the blessedness even of the most painful 
conviction of guilt, and the merciful and compas- 
sionate intent of God in producing such conviction. 
Truly, the greater the severity of God, the greater 
is His goodness. How frivolous, how unreflecting, 
how perfectly groundless and inconsistent, is the 
objection brought by some men against the system 
of the gospel, that it is a harsh and gloomy system ! 
To be sure, it is gloomy to determined sinners, to 
impenitent men, who wish to sin on, undisturbed by 
conscience and the fear of coming wrath ; and if it 
were not gloomy to such, it could not be from God, 
and never a single dying sinner could be saved. 
But it is gloomy to such, just to drive such to the 
cross, just to bring them to the Saviour ; and then 
and there it is all brightness, and a brightness the 
greater and more glorious for the gloom. 

Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we per- 
suade men. "We persuade them from the sin to the 
Saviour, from the law to the gospel, from the gloom 
to glory, from conviction to pardon, from death to 
life. Let the conviction of sin come, and let it press 
our guilty burdened souls in anguish to our Saviour, 
for that is our only hope. Let no man shrink back 



DISCLOSURES OF THE JUDGMENT. 133 

from the revelation of his sins now ; now while par- 
don may be found, it is mercy unspeakable to have 
your sins set in array before you, to have some 
leaves in the Book of Judgment illuminated for you 
beforehand. Draw not away your vision ; let the 
soul, though affrighted, gaze ; it may do you good, 
it may save you. Draw not away your shrinking 
heart from the sword of the spirit, from the hand 
and probe of the merciful heavenly physician, search- 
ing and revealing your guilt. Yea rather pray God 
so to manifest your sins now, beforehand, and to 
make you so painfully and despairingly sensible of 
the guilt and the burden of them, that you shall be 
compelled to cry out, Lord save me, I perish ! God 
be merciful to me a sinner ! 



Cftf f matt of % f i%e, attfr % 

"When our blessed Lord stood upon the earth as 
the Saviour and the light of the world, He said, " If 
any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge 
him not ; for I come not to judge the world, but to 
save the world. He that rejecteth me, and receiveth 
not my words, hath one that judgeth him ; the word 
that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the 
last day." 

There is in this passage a striking testimony as to 
the independence, self-evidence, and self-existence 
of the Word of God. It is not man that can judge 
the word, but the word itself is the judge of man, 
and the judge more particularly for the sin of unbe- 
lief in rejecting the Saviour. Not to receive Christ's 
words is to reject both him and them; and Christ's 
words are God's words, both in the Old Testament 
and the New, as is plain, not only from the oneness 
of Christ with God as God, but from direct palpable 
passages, such as that in 1st Peter, i. 10, 11, where 
the old prophets are represented as searching what 
or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which 
was in them did signify, when it testified before- 



THE PEKSOISr OF THE JUDGE. 135 

hand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that 
should follow. Now Christ, in the character of the 
faithful Witness of God, declares that at present if 
any man hear his words andbelieveth not, he judges 
him not. Nothing else will be needed, even at the 
last day, for his judgment and condemnation, but 
just to hear the word which he has rejected. And 
so nothing else will be needed for the condemnation 
of those who have resisted the light, but just to see 
the light. 

This is the condemnation, that light is come into 
the world, and men loved darkness rather than 
light, because their deeds were evil. When men 
neglect God's word and reject it, they are neglecting 
and rejecting that, which not only carries its own 
irresistible Divine evidence in itself, irresistible to a 
good and humble heart, but they are also investing 
it, in that very rejecting, with the ermine of their 
Judge ; they are arming it as the instrument and 
power of their condemnation. The fact that its 
evidence is in itself and irresistible, takes away all 
excuse for not attending to it, such as the criminal 
might plead if there were a long array of external 
evidence, which he must consult and decide upon 
before coming to the word. And considering the 
nature of the light, its neglect as well as its rejection 
condemns him ; its neglect is its rejection. How 
shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation ? 
This heedlessness as to God's voice is both conse- 
quence and proof of depravity. 

But in this passage the word judge must not be 
taken as meaning the person, or supplying the place 



136 THE PEKSON OF THE JUDGE, 

of the person, who shall sit in judgment at the last 
day. It is rather to be taken as intimating the 
nature and strength of the evidence, which will 
judge and condemn. Thus we say, if a man is 
brought in before an earthly tribunal accused of 
murder, and in the course of the investigation a let- 
ter addressed to him from a distant party is found 
in the Post Office demanding money as payment for 
concealing that very murder, we say of such a letter 
that it judges the man at once, it condemns him ; or 
if a man steals his neighbor's goods, and yet denies 
that he knew they were his neighbor's, and a writing 
is produced in court found in the possession of the 
man, showing beyond all possibility of doubt that 
he knew whose the goods were, and had the inten- 
tion to steal them, we say of such a writing that it 
judges and condemns him. In this sense it is, that 
the woed is said to judge and condemn the sinner. 

Let us enquire, more directly, first, as to the judge 
in person in the last day ; second as to the accuser ; 
third as to the evidence against the criminal at the 
bar. 

A man advancing to trial for some great crime, 
of which he is accused, will be anxious to know 
who is to be the judge, the day when his particular 
case comes to be tried. Perhaps among the judges 
on that circuit there is one, with whom the prisoner 
has in past time held transactions that go far to 
establish, if known, the proof of his guilt. Per- 
haps this judge holds a claim against him, which he 
has resisted and denied, and in addition to that, may 
have foreseen the very crime for which the man is 



AND THE EVIDENCE. 137 

to be tried, and may have forewarned him against 
the temptation and the danger. If this be the case, 
then, the moment that judge's name is named to 
the prisoner, his soul will sink within him ; he will 
say to himself, Then it is all over with me, for he 
knows my guilt, and must condemn me. "Whoever 
might be the jury, the prisoner would come to trial 
before such a judge with the hopelessness of de- 
spair. The very name of the judge destroys all 
possibility of deliverance. Considering the upright- 
ness of his character, the evidence that will come 
before him, and the amount of his own knowledge, 
there is no hope. 

Now, how stands the case with guilty man, ar- 
raigned for his sin against Grod, in the judgment at 
the last day ? Has he no anxiety, advancing swiftly 
to trial, and perfectly conscious of his guilt? Is 
there any question as to the person of his judge? 
If that person were a being who had but one unsat- 
isfied claim against him, and that claim iniquitously 
denied and resisted, or who had been cognizant 
of but one of the transgressions for which he is 
arraigned before God, having met him in time past, 
and forewarned him against it, and forbidden him 
the course which was leading to it, even then he 
would despair of acquittal, he must be perfectly 
sure of condemnation. But if the judge be a person 
knowing not one merely, but all his crimes, if he 
have had an eye, the eye of Omniscience, upon all his 
steps through life, if he have seen his iniquities in 
their very first thought in his soul, their earliest 
indeterminate and shadowy but not resisted begin- 



138 THE PERSON OF THE JUDGE, 

ning, if lie have known the growth of them from 
motive into act, and from act into habit, and all the 
while against all light, check, and warning ; what 
then ? And if he be a person not merely knowing 
all these things, and irradiating them with light, as 
the sun irradiates and marks the leaves it shines 
upon, but also, the very Being against whom all 
these things have been committed ; if he be the 
Law-giver, upon whose authority the criminal in 
the reckless violation of his laws, every step of his 
way through life has dared to trample ; if he be 
also the kind and gracious expostulator, admon- 
isher and prophet, who has met him every step of 
his ways, as a friend, to bid him beware ; and not 
only so, if he be also, in mysterious love, one who, 
to make an escape for him from the perdition of his 
ways possible, has died for him, and yet whose death 
he has despised as foolishness, or denied as an unreal, 
unmeaning parable ; if he be the Being, to whom 
he owes his existence, protection, support, and every 
blessing; if, in fine, he be the God, Creator, Pre- 
server, Eedeemer of the sinner, and if all these 
attributes, claims, authorities, and retributive de- 
mands and necessities, meet in the person of his 
Judge ; can human language state strong enough 
the certainty, or depict the terribleness of the pros- 
pect before him ? 

Under such a prospect, with such a cloud of ven- 
geance lowering, has he any being with whom he 
can entrust his case, any lawyer in the chancery of 
Heaven, any Advocate with the Father, who dare 
or will undertake the hopeless cause, or plead a suit 



AKD THE EVIDENCE. 139 

for the criminal at God's bar ? Is there any created 
being who can do it, man or angel ? If there were, 
is there any creature who dare or will do it ; any 
creature in heaven or on earth, who would have the 
heart, the disposition, even if it were permissible 
under God's government, to stand up in behalf of a 
criminal, whose guilt is not only undoubted, un- 
questionable, and to the bottom known, but has not 
one redeeming quality, and is attended with every 
possible exasperation under heaven? If there be 
none among good beings in all God's universe who 
can, or whose unmingled purity and goodness and 
delight in God's justice and holiness would let 
them, even if they could, stand up to plead for the 
exemption of such unmingled guilt from deserved 
punishment, is there one among evil beings, one of 
the demons below, under whose guidance the crim- 
inal at the bar has rushed on to such excesses and 
uninterrupted continuance of sin, who would speak 
for him ? Alas ! they will stand, if opportunity be 
given, as his fierce, malignant accusers. The 
tempter is the enemy and accuser of mankind. 
There is no lawyer either in heaven, earth or hell, 
who can or will undertake his cause. He must 
stand alone. His guilt isolates him, as to his per- 
sonal accountability, conflict, and desert and en- 
durance of the penalty, from all the universe, while 
it connects him as to its aggravation, its conse- 
quence, and its evidence, with all the universe. It 
isolates him as to friends, it gives him over to 
enemies. 

There was an Advocate, a friend, a Eedeemer, to 



140 THE PERSON OF THE JUDGE, 

whom the criminal might have committed his cause, 
no matter for its utter blackness and desperateness, 
whatever may have been the depth, enormousness 
or malignancy of his guilt. There was an Advocate 
appointed of God for this very purpose, and with a 
title which no other being in the universe dare take, 
the Friend of Sinners ; a title and an office without 
parallel under God's government ; a Being appoint- 
ed by the injured law-giver himself, as a Counsellor 
of Mercy, to save the guilty from deserved punish- 
ment. His name shall be called Wonderful, Coun- 
sellor. But this wonderful Being, this Advocate 
with God, must be applied to by the sinner himself, 
and in this world ; and if such application be re- 
fused, or neglected, then the case goes forward on 
its own merits, to the judgment, and there the crim- 
inal stands alone, surrounded by the evidences of 
his guilt, but isolated in it from the whole universe 
of God, with none to befriend or deliver him. The 
judgment being set, the witnesses summoned, the 
assizes opened, he has had his choice, his voluntary 
disposition of all things, and there can be no 
change ; and the very fact of no Advocate appear- 
ing in his behalf, were there no other positive evi- 
dence against him except the accusation, would be 
sufficient for his condemnation. He must stand 
alone, with innumerable participators in his guilt, 
indeed, and accessories to it, and accusers of it, but 
not one defender; alone, without an advocate, in 
utter despair. Alone, cut off from God, over- 
whelmed with the conviction of sin, and unable to 
open his lips except to cry out guilty before God ! 



AND THE EVIDENCE. 141 

And the Judge in this ease ! Who is he ? How 
shall we describe his appearance, his attributes ? 
We have supposed a case, and it is the reality ; but 
we can take the description only from God's word. 
"And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white 
horse ; and He that sat upon him was called Faith- 
ful and True, and in righteousness He doth judge 
and make war. His eyes were as a name of fire, 
and on His head were many crowns ; and He had a 
name written that no man knew but Himself. And 
He was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood ; 
and His name is called the Word of God. And 
out of His mouth goeth a sharp sword, and He 
treadeth the wine-press of the fierceness and wrath 
of Almighty God. And He hath on His vesture 
and on His thigh a name written, King of kings and 
Lord of lords." 

Can we recognize the Person of this description ? 
Have we ever seen or imagined this King of wrath 
and glory, or has He ever been revealed to us in any 
other character ? Have we seen Him, have we fled 
to Him, as our Advocate and Intercessor with the 
Father, our Kedeemer and not our Judge alone? 
" Behold He cometh in the clouds, and every eye 
shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him ; 
and then shall all the kindreds of the earth wail be- 
cause of Him." Look back once more to the most 
sublime of all the visions of the Prophets, whose 
subject is the judgment of the last day, and compare 
the burning imagery of the Old Testament with the 
answering flames of the New. "I beheld till the 
flames were cast down, and the Ancient of Days did 



142 THE PEKSON OF THE JUDGE 



sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair 
of His head like the pure wool ; His throne was like 
the fiery flame, and His wheels as burning fire. A 
fiery stream issued and came forth from before 
Him : thmisand thousands ministered unto Him, and 
ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him : 
the judgment was set, and the books were opened." 
" When the Son of Man shall come in His glory, 
and all the holy angels with Him, then shall He sit 
upon the throne of His glory, and before Him shall 
be gathered all nations. And He shall separate 
them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his 
sheep from the goats ; and He shall set the sheep on 
His right hand, but the goats on His left. And He 
shall say to them upon His right hand, Come, ye 
blessed, but to them upon His left hand, Depart, ye 
cursed. And these shall go away into everlasting 
punishment, but the righteous into life eternal." 

Thus far God himself has guided and rendered 
both possible and lawful the excursions of the human 
imagination in regard to the Judge at the last day, and 
the unparalleled scenes of the judgment. Farther 
no eye can pierce, no mind can follow, till that day 
when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven 
with His mighty angels, in flaming fire, taking 
vengeance on them that know not Grod, and that obey 
not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Till then, 
He stands in the midst of the seven golden candle- 
sticks, for the redemption of mankind. But even in 
that position of forgiving mercy, how august, how 
glorious, and to be feared with holy fear by those 
who love Him. " His head and His hairs white like 



AND THE EVIDENCE. 143 

wool, as white as snow, and His eyes as a flame of 
fire, and His feet like unto fine brass, as if they 
burned in a furnace, and His countenance as the sun 
shining on His strength, and His voice as the sound 
of many waters." 

From the Judge we turn, under the guidance of 
Grod's word, in the midst of this awful and glorious 
scene, to the accuser. This is none other than the 
Divine Law itself, in all its majesty. It has a two- 
fold office of indictment and conviction ; that of the 
guilt of man for breaking the great moral law of 
God revealed on Sinai, and that of his guilt in the 
rejection of Christ and His words in the gospel. 
"Do not think," said Christ to the Jews who did 
not believe on Him, " that I will accuse you to the 
Father. There is one that accuseth you, even Moses, 
in whom ye trust. For had ye believed Moses, ye 
would have believed me, for he wrote of me." Even 
so the law, in its original charge against us, and 
conviction, and penalty of death upon us, is our 
schoolmaster, to bring us to Christ. But if it fail of 
that — if we reject Christ, whether trusting in the law 
that we have broken, and in a miserable, patched-up 
morality of pretended obedience to it, or, in utter 
insensibility and heedlessness both of the law and 
the gospel, disregarding Christ, and so rejecting 
Him, — then the law also accuses the soul in regard 
fco such rejection. Grod's law, both in the Old and 
New Testament, one and the same, the law of pre- 
cepts and the law of love, makes the accusation. It 
comes down upon the soul ; and by it is the knowl 
edge of sin, and every mouth is stopped, and all the 



144 THE PEESON OF THE JUDGE, 

world becomes guilty before God. And the greater 
the knowledge of sin by the glory and clear-shining 
holiness of the law, the greater the guilt of the soul, 
and the showing of that guilt, in the rejection of the 
Saviour. If it were iniquity to break God's law, 
what incomparably greater guilt, when the law itself 
pointed to a Saviour provided of God for redemption 
from the guilt and the consequences of such viola- 
tion ! — what incomparably greater guilt to set at 
nought that salvation, to trample on the claims of 
the Divine Eedeemer as well as the Divine Law — 
nay, as God's word sets the guilt of such rejection 
forth, to trample under foot the Son of God ! If 
they who despised Moses' law died without mercy, 
nnder two or three witnesses, of how much sorer 
punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy 
who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and 
counted the blood of the covenant an unholy thing, 
and done despite unto the Spirit of grace ? And 
this is the guilt of every rejection of Christ Jesus, 
under whatever circumstances. Call it what you 
please, disguise or mask or flatter it as you will, it 
comes to this ; it is the climax of human guilt ; it is 
the last, preponderating, overwhelming act and 
proof of man's depravity against the love, as well as 
the majesty and holiness of God. 

And now, do we want confirmation of all this ? 
Is proof needed at the judgment ? The criminal 
himself is stricken with despair, guilty before God. 
The law only need appear against him, and it con- 
demns and silences him. Its bare accusation is 
awful, irresistible proof; he is struck down by it. 



AND THE EVIDENCE. 145 

But is there a manifestation needed, a judge and a 
judgment of his guilt, in the very showing of the 
law under which and against which he acted, such 
as will fill all minds with a conviction as deep and 
abiding as eternity, as outshining and glorious as the 
holiness of God ? We suppose there is ; we suppose, 
indeed, that this is one great object of a day of judg- 
ment, to vindicate, in the sight of all the universe, 
the ways of Grod to man. We suppose that its pro- 
cesses will be conducted with reference to this very 
purpose. Accordingly, the original evidence shall 
be called up. Against what has the criminal sinned ? 
What was the light that shone upon him ? What 
the manifestation of the Divine glory that stood in 
his way ? And as to the last completion and seal 
of his iniquity, its highest possible development in 
this world, and its seal of unchangeableness and per- 
petuity in the eternal world, in the rejection of the 
only and infinitely merciful remedy offered from 
heaven, what is the demonstration of that? "He 
that rejecteth me," says Christ, " and receiveth not 
my words, hath one that judgeth him. The WOED 
that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the 
last day." 

Let, then, the universe hear that. Let its glory be 
seen by bright intelligences. Let Him speak again, 
who spake as never man spake. Let the beauty 
and the power of his teachings, and the loveliness 
and compassion of his example, and the tenderness 
of his invitations and promises, be spread before the 
universe of souls. Let him be heard saying, " Come 
unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and 

7 



146 THE PEKSON OF THE JUDGE, 

I will give you rest." Let the law appear in the 
glory of its transcript of God's holiness and good- 
ness, and the gospel in its thrilling manifestation 
of the wonders of God's forgiving love. Then shall 
it be seen that against all that light, love, and mercy, 
against all that tide of tenderness and expostulation, 
and the current of providence and grace, the sinful 
man pursued his way down to ruin. It shall be 
seen that though the blood of the Lamb of God 
stood before him, he trampled over it ; that though 
the merciful and gentle Spirit of God warned him, 
and strove with him, he heeded it not ; that when 
the sword of the Spirit was flashing the terrors of 
God's law upon his soul, it was of no avail, nor of 
any avail all his experience of the goodness of God's 
leading him to repentance. It shall be seen to be 
his' condemnation, that light came into the world, 
and into his soul, but that he loved darkness. It 
shall be seen that by that light the things into which 
the angels in heaven desire to look, and by the won- 
derful glory of which they are ravished, were shown 
to him, but he cared not for them. That though 
the attributes of God in the cross of Christ were 
demonstrated to him, as intense, eternal, and unal- 
terable against sin, he cared not for that ; that though 
the transcendent spectacle of a dying Saviour, the 
incarnate Son of God, lifted up for him, was shown 
him, he cared not for that ; that when a thousand 
times it was shown him that on his acceptance of 
this Eedeemer hung his last and only hope of for- 
giving mercy from his God, and that his contempt 
and rejection of this divine effort would seal him up 



AND THE EVIDENCE. 147 

to inevitable and eternal guilt and misery, still he 
received Him not. 

All these warnings, restrainings, converting in- 
fluences, were in the word, and all this demonstra- 
tion of guilt arises out of it ; the conviction of in- 
gratitude, of selfishness, of unbelief, of ambition, 
of the pride of evil, and the fear of man, and the 
shame and disregard of good men and of God, and 
the treasuring up of wrath against the day of wrath, 
and revelation of God's righteous judgments. And 
it will be found that in the midst of all his darkness 
the Word of God followed him ; that in misery it 
got hold upon him ; that in the visions of the night 
it terrified him ; that in a thousand forms it was laid 
before him ; that good men and good books, and the 
prayers of saints, and the providence of God, 
brought it home to him ; that it lodged in his con- 
science, and was an element there, of which he en- 
deavored in vain to rid himself, but never could 
exclude it from his being ; that it was ever pressing 
him to God, while he himself was pressing farther 
from Him ; that it set him on fire round about but 
he knew it not ; that it drew him to the light, but 
he would not follow. The demonstration of his 
guilt from the word of God will be as clear as God's 
own holiness, and as definite as the actions of his life. 

Oh guilty, dying sinner ! Thou must have an Ad- 
vocate with God, or thou art lost forever ! What 
canst thou do, in the day when He shall reckon with 
thee ? Thou art advancing to thy trial ; hast thou 
retained thy counsel ? There is one appointed Ad- 
vocate, whom thou mayest have without retaining 



148 THE PERSON OF THE JUDGE. 

fee, and mayest put thy whole cause securely in His 
hands, and He (Oh wondrous mystery of grace!) 
will justify thee ! yea, justify thee before God, 
thou guilty, dying sinner ! Wilt thou trust thyself 
with Him ? Wilt thou tell Him all the secrets of 
thine heart ? Wilt thou let Him intercede for thee ? 
Friend of sinners ! Wonderful, Counsellor, Ad- 
vocate, both of the government and the criminal ! 
Yea, appointed of God to be a Prince and a Saviour, 
to give repentance and the remission of sins ! Oh 
that every heart would hide in Him, would trust 
Him, would love Him, would receive His glad sal- 
vation ! 



Cfie things ^tritten m \\z %nh> 



In tlie last revealed exposition of the judgment 
we see the dead, small and great, stand before God ; 
and the books are opened, " And another book was 
opened which is the book of life. And the dead 
were judged out of those things which were written 
in the books, according to their works." 

It may be that this is not figurative language. It 
is commonly so regarded, at least that part of it 
which speaks of books. But we know nothing 
which should prevent us from interpreting even that 
with a degree of literal simplicity. Not that any 
man would dream of there being books at the judg- 
ment made out of perishable matter, and bound 
with parchment, any more than a sane mind would 
expect to find palaces or streets of solid gold in the 
New Jerusalem. But there may be a literal record, 
in form and space, of the life of every creature, 
answering to our idea of the reality of a book, 
which shall truly be opened at the judgment, and 
be there used in determining the eternal sentence of 
every individual. 

It may be said that the Divine Omniscience is of 
itself such a book ; but in the passages which speak 



150 THE THINGS WEITTEN IN THE BOOKS. 

of this matter, there is manifestly a special record 
by that Omniscience referred to, which special record 
is to be opened in form. And who can tell but that 
every attitude of his moral being, every movement 
of his heart, his will, his affections, as well as every 
word of his lips, and every action of his life, goes 
down, by some mysterious arrangement, sponta- 
neously into such a record ? There may be a series 
of moral and spiritual daguerreotypes thus perpet- 
ually drawn from every intelligent creature, by as 
fixed a spiritual necessity as the physical arrange- 
ment by which the sun inevitably draws the picture 
of the face upon the plate prepared for it. And as 
that picture is drawn without any disguise or mis- 
take, exactly as the face is, in whatever position it 
happens to be, or with whatever expression it hap- 
pens to wear, so with the series of pictures or repro- 
ductions of our moral selves, our elements of char- 
acter, our habits of action, our attitudes of thought, 
feeling, expression, which go into God's book for 
the judgment, out of which, when it is filled up, can 
be read at a glance the whole character and destiny 
of the individual. 

Let us, then, look for a moment, first at the contents 
of this book of God as a book of character; also 
at the certainty with which, supposing it were 
opened beforehand, even in this world, the end 
could be predicted from its tenor ; and again at the 
only cause or agency by which its condemning tenor 
can be changed into mercy. Our life, then, under 
the operation of the Divine Omniscience, becomes a 
solemn book, on the leaves of which are written, 



THE THINGS WRITTEN IN THE BOOKS. 151 

though invisibly to mortals, the processes of our 
real existence, the goings on of our inward, hidden 
being, the movements of real, undissembled, abso- 
lute character and motive. Our appearance in the 
eyes of men, our actions with the world, our life 
which the world notices, occupies but little of the 
writing in this book. By far the greater part is 
taken up with the processes of a life which men do 
not and cannot see, which God only sees fully and 
clearly, and of which we ourselves seldom read 
more than one page at a time. For though no part 
of the writing in this book goes into it without our 
consciousness, yet the moment it is there, the mo- 
ment it is recorded as a development that has actually 
taken place in and of our nature, we forget it, and 
pass on to the next. Every fact, every development 
in it is indestructible, is eternal. Every event, every 
thought, every feeling of our existence, every 
passion, every wish, every impulse, is a part of our- 
selves, a part of our character, a part of our ac- 
tual life, a part of the evidence by which we are to 
be judged, a part of the realities with which the 
book is filled, for us or against us. A thought once 
conceived, a feeling once indulged or experienced, 
a word once spoken, a movement or event once 
acted, goes down into the record, cannot be with- 
drawn from it, cannot be obliterated ; may now be 
invisible, but it is perpetual, is laid up for the judg- 
ment, It may be invisible now to every eye but 
God's, and yet it is visible now, whenever our own 
consciousness, the notice from ourselves, which was 
present when it was acted, when it first went into 



152 THE THINGS WRITTEN IN THE BOOKS. 

being, is again fixed upon it. And that may be at an j 
time, and in a manner the most unexpected. The 
consciousness is sometimes carried back to a single 
word or feeling in the pages of this book even after 
the lapse of years, and there it pauses, bringing out the 
letters as in fire, reading them as clearly as if the hand 
had this moment traced them, and remembering the 
very atmosphere of character connected with them. 
Every letter in this book is preserved, every letter 
is important. The minutest processes of thought, 
the evanescent shades of feeling, the succession of 
uttered words, that seem almost as swift, as idle, as 
without law, and as countless, as the trembling and 
whispering of the leaves, when the wind breathes 
over a vast forest, must all be put down, all go to 
make up the whole meaning, all are parts of that 
mysterious, sacred, immutable, awful, eternal reality, 
called character. I write immutable, because, when 
the book is filled, there shall be no change forever. 
The very last entry or record made in it in this 
world may change the whole for eternity ; may pos- 
sibly, by the grace of Christ, do this, as in the case 
even of the thief upon the cross, when that last de- 
velopment, the last dying breath of the wind of life 
over the forest, — Lord remember me when thou 
comest into thy kingdom, — changed the character of 
the whole book of the existence of that immortal 
being for the judgment. But when the last stir, 
the last whisper, upon the leaves has passed, the 
book is finished, and character is immutable, eter- 
nal. And ordinarily, nay, almost always, the last 
entry made in the book, the last recorded syllable. 



THE THINGS WRITTEN IN THE BOOKS. 153 

is just as was the preceding, just follows in the 
train of habit and of life written down in all the 
previous pages. 

And again, because immutable, I have written aw- 
ful. Yes ! the reality of character, fixed for eternal 
duration, is a most solemn and awful contemplation. 
There is no idea in the whole compass of our 
conceptions more solemn than that of character. 
What you are now, what you have been thus far 
through life, in all likelihood you will be through 
eternity. We say in all likelihood, because, if you 
are now an unconverted soul, then, judgiug from 
all human experience, and from your own habitual 
neglect thus far, of the opportunities of change, the 
probability is that you will not change before you 
die. And what you are when you die, you will be, 
not in all likelihood, but in all certainty, through 
eternity. There is, therefore, nothing more solemn 
than the contemplation of character, nothing more 
intensely interesting than to watch its development. 

We have said that every letter in the book is pre- 
served. There may be actions, there may be words, 
there may be thoughts and feelings, so seemingly 
idle, so shadowy, so evanescent as the summer light- 
ning, in a man's existence, as by themselves to seem 
of no importance; but they all go to spell some 
words, and the words go to make up sentences, and 
the sentences complete the book, and make up the 
final sentence at the judgment. There may be in- 
terjections and glancings and points of thought and 
language, almost as meaningless and characterless 
by themselves, as the fount of type distributed in 



154 THE THINGS WRITTEN IN THE BOOKS. 

the printer's cases ; but when they come to be set 
up together, and copied in the book, even a comma 
gives meaning. And therefore it is said by our 
blessed Lord that for every idle word that men shall 
speak, they shall give account thereof in the Day 
of Judgment. Letters form syllables, syllables form 
words, and words are connected by points so mi- 
nute, that a hundred of them together might not 
form a single syllable ; but their position fills them 
with meaning. It is not their greatness in them- 
selves, but the place in which you see them in the 
book, that gives them interest, makes them of con- 
sequence. And so it is with the almost invisible, 
imperceptible tenor of men's words and fancies, the 
current of men's unmarked, unnoticed life. Even 
a comma gives meaning, and a word that seems idle 
now, may be found, when you read the impression 
it makes in its own place, set in connection, to be 
very far from idle, nay, to have some deep and 
solemn meaning, or to throw an important light 
upon some other train of meaning. Sometimes 
things that seem as evanescent as the flashes of 
heat lightning in a summer's night, reveal a whole 
horizon of character in an instant ; just as in a sin- 
gle flash from amidst the darkness you may see re- 
vealed, with almost the distinctness of day, trees, 
buildings, mountains, and the whole line where 
earth separates from heaven. 

The materials of character lie in our being and 
habits, distributed apparently without law or order, 
as a superficial observer might suppose, just as the 
type in a printing office seems scattered without 



THE THINGS WKITTEN IN THE BOOKS. 155 

meaning. But there is a law of character, a law of 
development, by which they are set up ; the evolu- 
tions of our being put them daily, hourly into 
shape, into publication, and then comes their record 
in the Book ; then they are indestructible, eternal, 
and full of meaning. That record is as clear and 
correct as the eye of Omniscience. No mistake is 
ever possible. The sun does not strike upon the 
plate of a daguerreotype a reflection of the image set 
against it with half the unerring precision, with 
which our thoughts, words, feelings, our whole ele- 
ments of being, character themselves, register them • 
selves, engrave themselves, in that Book for eterflity. 
The clear white paper does not receive the impress- 
ion from the type forced upon it, with half the 
exactness or power, with which the Book of charac- 
ter receives and preserves, in unmistakable, indelible 
identity, the whole image, or reproduction, of the 
minutest processes of our being. 

No syllable nor idle word can be lost. But even 
if it could, even if there were not this infinite, and 
to a wicked mind, intolerable exactitude of a repro- 
duction ; even if there were no greater accuracy 
than that with which the human mind can turn off 
its own creations, calculations and processes of 
thought, and numberings of event, by mere material 
machinery, with the perishable visible qualities of 
ink and type ; even then there could be no material 
mistake. Though a word be lost, and even whole 
sentences, you may almost invariably determine 
their purport unerringly by the context. Even 
manuscripts almost illegible, may be clearly de- 



156 THE THINGS WKITTEN IN THE BOOKS. 

cyphered by the skill of man, and lost inscriptions 
may be restored, in a manner that leaves no doubt 
whatever in any mind in regard to their meaning. 
And so in the context of a man's life, when it has 
flowed on for a few pages, yon could not only guess, 
but might read unerringly the meaning not only of 
words, but even of sentences here and there lost or 
illegible. 

And if God should open to you the Book of 
Judgment, that invisible record of which we have 
been speaking, and make its pages visible to you 
only for a little distance; if he should show you 
what is already written down in the record of any 
man's life up to the present moment, you could pre- 
dict yourself, with unerring certainty, from that 
part alone, what the tenor of the next page will be, 
except for only one cause, one possible change that 
may be effected. One cause put out of view, you 
could tell as unerringly that the next page of ex- 
istence will be of the same moral tenor as the past, 
as if you stood in futurity on the eternal side of the 
page, and read it as already past. One cause only 
excepted, and there runs through the record of a 
man's existence an inalienable despotism and identi- 
ty of impression and law of character from begin- 
ning to end, from time into eternity. It is the law 
of sin and of death in our corrupt nature, which you 
are as sure will come out and be reproduced in 
every successive page of existence, and rule the 
whole, except for one cause, as you are that you 
have already seen its development in any one page 
or sentence. The beginning is declarative of the 



THE THINGS WEITTEN IN THE BOOKS. 157 

way, and the way of every man is declarative of 
the end of that man. You may not only predict with 
dread certainty that the next page of life turned 
over, and noted down, will be the same with all the 
past, but you can predict and read the end, as 
certainly as if you stood at the end ; as certainly as 
if God placed you by the dying sinner's bed, with 
your ear so close to his departing spirit, that not 
even a breath of impulse or feeling in his soul could 
stir unknown. 

Except for one cause you know that the soul of 
the man whose life, as it is written for the judgment, 
God has opened before you thus far, showing you 
that it has run on hitherto without God, without 
prayer, without an element of life indicated in it, 
will enter on the eternal world and pass to the eter- 
nal judgment, and be engulphed in the eternal 
destiny, just as hopeless and prayerless and lifeless 
as it has lived, with just the same elements of 
character and none different, with just the same 
ceaseless and determined absence and rejection of 
all the life of heaven, and just the same adherence 
and immutable despotism of the death of sin. 

And now, what is this one cause ? What is that 
solitary interposition, the possibility of which throws 
a bare single uncertainty into a calculation otherwise 
unerring, a prediction otherwise as sure as if the 
Eternal himself had uttered it ? What is that prin- 
ciple, or mighty agent, that can or may possibly 
interfere, and change the tenor of that book of 
character and judgment, which you have thus far 
read with the most perfect conviction that this man's 



158 THE THINGS WRITTEN IN THE BOOKS. 

life is flowing on to inevitable perdition ? Perhaps 
there may have been not even an indication of any 
such agency, not a solitary trace of the effort or 
operation or existence of any such principle, in all 
the almost countless variety of impulses, thoughts, 
feelings, plans, desires, expectations, efforts, attain- 
ments, disappointments, developments of character, 
which you have been perusing. Perhaps, amidst all 
that variety of selfish, sinful development, and all 
the succession of events and changes, and trials of 
God's providence upon the soul, there may have 
been one unvaried continuity of hardness of heart, 
and insensibility and carelessness of mind, in regard 
to all considerations drawn from the eternal world ; 
an abandonment and destitution of all feeling, all 
alarm, all anxiety on the only subject on which the 
soul of man ought to be anxious, while on every 
other subject it is full of interest. And if so ; if this 
insensibility has become the habit of the soul, of 
which you are reading the development thus far, to 
judge of its character and end for the future ; and 
if you can trace no presence or effect of a higher 
power, life and effort, than that of the law of sin and 
of death in this fast ripening nature, then you have 
double reason to conclude that there never will be a 
change, but that this nature will go on developing 
as before, and is only fulfilling and ripening for end- 
less ruin. 

But it is scarcely possible to find such a case ; it 
is scarcely possible but that there must be, in some 
part of the record of this individual life, this develop- 
ment of character, and of influences for its formation, 



THE THINGS WKITTEN IN THE BOOKS. 159 

some trace of the presence of that agency, some 
proof of the working of that principle, which alone 
is to change, if it ever be changed, the tenor of this 
record for the judgment. And indeed, if yon look 
carefully, you will see in ten thousand instances in 
the chain of events, circumstances, providences, 
causes, trials and blessings, prosperous and adverse 
discipline traced through the book, the undoubted 
presence and effort of a heavenly agency, the indi- 
cations of a cause working to turn the current of the 
man's being, if possible, towards heaven. 

You will find seasons of warning, of visitation, of 
solemnity — you will find the record of innumerable 
interpositions, both of Providence and grace — you 
will find the history of seasons, in which seed was 
sown that had almost taken root and sprung up in 
the man's character, to bear fruit to life everlasting. 
You will find, above all, the solemn record of the 
man's Sabbaths of mercy, and of the course of his 
feelings and experiences beneath them, and of the 
manner in which he turned aside from them un- 
changed, and withdrew his soul away from their 
merciful influences ; and as you see how, year after 
year, he came up to them, passed through them all, 
and entered again into the world a prayerless, un- 
changed man, you will feel with a deeper and deeper 
solemnity that the man's prospect of ever being 
changed is smaller and smaller, and the certainty of 
his going on to the end of his career as he has thus 
far pursued it, greater and greater. You begin to 
see that that agency which alone could defeat the 
certainty of your prediction as to the end of that 



160 THE THINGS WRITTEN IN THE BOOKS. 

man, has manifestly been at work already, and been 
successfully resisted. You will perhaps meet with 
the record even of precious revivals of religion, set 
down in the book of this man's character for the judg- 
ment, and all the experiences of his soul in the midst 
of them — experiences of God's warning and gracious 
providences, and offers of the most inestimable kind. 

And if you meet with one such season, where the 
converting influences of God's Spirit have been 
descending on the souls of others around this man, 
but have had no effect upon him, leaving him, to 
say the least, just as hardened and careless as before, 
you will think that the possibility of an interposition 
now in his case, to change the whole tenor of his 
character, and make a new record for the judgment, 
even the record of faith in Christ, of a holy sorrow 
for sin, of heartfelt repentance, of forgiveness and 
eternal life, is indeed faint. You will feel that the 
way of this man is declarative of the end of this 
man ; and that, in all probability, the next page of 
the journal for eternity which you have been perus- 
ing will be of the same hopeless tenor as the last ; 
and that just thus the record will go on, till the last 
day of life, with its mercies, is wasted, and the last 
leaf of character filled up, unchanged, for the eternal 
world. 

But it is time to change the argument from sup- 
position to reality, and to turn the glass through 
which we have been gazing at the book of another's 
destiny in upon ourselves. May there not possibly 
be readers of these very pages, whose individual 
consciousness recognizes and claims the portrait as 



THE THINGS WKITTEN IN THE BOOKS. 161 

their own ? Are there not those, whose consciences 
say distinctly and undeniably, Thou art the man, 
and this is the prediction of thy destiny. If you 
have not yourself fled to the Eedeemer of your soul 
to have your name entered as a penitent in his book 
of Life, whose character have you been reading thus 
far in God's book of Judgment ? Is it not your 
own, in forgetfulness of God, in procrastination, in 
neglect of your eternal interests, in resistance against 
the Holy Ghost, in the waste of innumerable oppor- 
tunities, in presumptuous sins against the Divine 
mercy, in hardness, insensibility and unbelief? 

And what now is the prediction of your own des- 
tiny, and what think you in your own case of the 
principle that the character and way of a man is 
declarative of the end of that man ? Is it not as 
certain as that the sun shines, that you will continue, 
unless you cry out for God's mercy, unless you seek 
the arresting and renewing power of God's grace, 
that you will continue just in this dreadful neglect 
of all opportunities of grace, till the book of your 
character is filled up entirely for the judgment, till 
the last moment of your life comes, without one 
element which is not an element against you, with- 
out one, which is not an element of sin and death ? 
Oh then, if you entertain the least thought of salva- 
tion, have mercy on your own soul ! Let it not 
pass on any longer in life beneath such a prophesy 
of death, beneath such a tremendous weight of evi- 
dence for your destruction. Rest not, till you get 
some element besides your sin and condemnation in 
the book of Judgment. If there be not the element 



162 THE THINGS WRITTEN IN THE BOOKS. 

of love to Christ, of faith, in Christ, of reliance on 
Christ, of sorrow for sin, if there be not the element 
of repentance and prayer, there is nothing there, 
which is not utter desperation, which will not banish 
yon forever from heaven, which will not whelm yon 
in inevitable ruin. 

JSTow, in more than a dream, as you look over 
your past life, God opens to you the book of Judg- 
ment ; but thus far, if you have not repented of 
your sins, it is for you the book of guilt and ruin, 
the book of exclusion from Heaven, and the title- 
deed of your soul to the world of woe ! But praised 
be God, it is not yet filled up, there are pages in it 
yet unwritten. What shall be the tenor of the next 
page, even if one day's leaf still remains for your 
will, your character, to turn over? To think of 
its being at your own disposal, to fill up, as you 
will, for Eternity ! If now you will but write 
Christ's name there, and write your own name 
beneath it, though yours is the name of a poor, 
guilty, lost sinner, a worthless name, yet if you put 
it there as your own humble believing signature, 
God will put it with Christ's own name in his book 
of Life. And then the whole nature of this book of 
Judgment shall be changed for you from a book of 
only sin and misery to a book of grace and glory ! 
Let it be written on this page in your history, that 
there was weeping and prayer on earth, and joy in 
heaven over one sinner that repenteth ! 



€fj£ %tmxtdim d X\t f rat 

In tlie affirmation of things revealed to faith, and 
received on the ground solely of the word of God, 
the sacred writers always assume them as absolute 
knowledge. There is no shadow of doubt admitted 
or intimated. So with the disclosure of the resur- 
rection of the just. The link by which the argu- 
ment of Divine truth is fastened to its practical con- 
clusion of duty is just this — -forasmuch as ye know. 
The encouragement, the animation, the impulse to 
duty, is not hope merely, but knowledge. The 
apostle speaks, at the close of the great resurrection- 
chapter, given to him for the church, in a firm, un- 
hesitating manner, as of a thing demonstrated, and 
not to be questioned. 

Then, again, the point or period where this assur- 
ance of reward for all the labor of the righteous in 
Christ Jesus has its termination, its fulfillment, is to 
be considered ; the vista, through which the mind 
of the writer runs on to far distant ages, stopping 
nowhere short of the final coming of the Lord in 
glory and for judgment. Ye know that your labor 
is not in vain in the Lord. But it was not from any 
present victory or success, not from anything in the 



164 THE RESURRECTION OF THE JUST. 

saints' then present experience, or even earnest, of 
the inheritance of glory ; for they were then passing 
through great trial, and were regarded as the off- 
scouring of creation ; and it was not by any appeal 
to sight, or proof from sense, that the conclusion was 
established, but wholly by faith, founded on God's 
word, God's promises, through the cross, death, and 
resurrection of the Saviour, bringing future eternal 
glories near, as known, undoubted realities. 

Because Christ has died and risen again. 
This is the whole and sole foundation laid by the 
apostle ; and this stupendous fact once admitted, 
that He, who was in the beginning with God, and 
who was God, and who is God over all blessed for- 
ever, became man, God manifest in the flesh, suffer- 
ing, dying, rising, we KNOW that the purposes of 
God in this amazing transaction cannot fail. What- 
ever object God had in view in the incarnation, 
death, and resurrection of the Lord of life and glory, 
must be accomplished. There is no more possibility 
of a failure, than there is that Jehovah should abdi- 
cate the throne of the universe. The blindest faith 
may find light here, and the deepest despondency 
may be encouraged here, in this one fact, undiscover- 
able, unimaginable, but by Divine revelation, that 
Christ, the incarnate Son of God, has died. It is 
the central fact of all our knowing ; it is as a sun 
shot into the chaos of human speculation, and a 
radiance spreads from it through infinitude, and a 
power is in it vivifying all knowledge. The dis- 
covery of the law of gravitation was not so simplify- 
ing and explanatory in the theory of the physical 



THE RESURRECTION OF THE JUST. 165 

universe, as the knowledge of the death of Christ, 
by Divine revelation, in the moral universe. If we 
believe this fact as God has revealed it, then we 
know that all God's promises, made with respect to 
this fact, and on the ground of it, are sure ; they are 
all yea and amen in Christ Jesus. They all hang 
and hinge upon this fact, cluster and revolve around 
it, and derive their life and activity from it. What- 
ever else might fail, nothing that is attached to the 
cross of Christ can fail. 

Now, as to the nature of the resurrection, as a 
demonstration grounded on this transaction, we may 
find it briefly summed up in a passage in the Epistle 
of Paul to the Thessalonians : " For if we believe 
that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also 
which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him." 
This constitutes the whole argument in the fifteenth 
chapter of the First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthi- 
ans, the dying and rising again of Jesus. By Him 
is the resurrection of the dead. For this purpose He 
both died and rose again, that believers in Him, 
having died to sin and risen in holiness, might rise 
also from the dead unto life everlasting. The resur- 
rection of the dead is to be the great revelation of 
the Divine glory ; it will be the scene in which all 
the processes of grace and of God's providential 
wisdom, that have been drawing on silently and in 
concealment, will come to their most glorious out- 
breaking development before the whole universe. 
Till that day everything lies hidden, or in germs, or 
like the processes of a living vegetation under 
ground. Before that day, the very providences of 



166 THE RESURRECTION OF THE JUST. 

God are as seed sown, and preparing, out of sight, to 
rise into light and glory. There can be no concep- 
tion, beforehand, of the greatness of that glory. 

If a man that had never seen in its blossoming 
perfection that plant that blooms but once in a 
hundred years, were to look upon the rough stem, 
or uncouth leaves of the tree, could he form the 
least conception of the consummate loveliness of the 
flower, when it shall appear, the exquisite beauty 
and grace to be developed ? If any man had lived 
all his days in a twilight prison, or subterranean 
cave, and had never beheld the sunrise, could he 
have the least imagination of the glory of that scene ? 
But far less can it come within the scope of a human 
intellect to behold in the seed-corn of God's opera- 
tions the infinite glory of the future, or to conceive 
the nature of that scene, when the Lord Jesus shall 
be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, to 
be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all 
who believe. The resurrection itself is a transaction 
of inconceivable, incomprehensible power and glory. 
The time when it takes place is the time of the 
' Redeemer's second coming.* Hence " the coming of 
the Lord," and "the appearing of the Lord," being 
connected, in the minds of the disciples, with such 
glorious expectations, came to be the signal phrases, 
by which they described the consummation of all 
things in God's scheme of redemption. When the 
Saviour cometh in the clouds of heaven, and all the 
holy angels with Him, he cometh to raise the dead, 
and to judge all nations. When Paul says that those 
also who sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him, 



THE RESURRECTION OF THE JUST. 167 

he means that the dead in Christ shall be raised, and 
carried into heaven to be forever with the Lord. 
In nearly all his epistles he presents the same great 
fact, as the great ground of encouragement and joy, 
and sometimes in a logical strain not unlike the one 
in the great resurrection chapter to the Corinthians. 

This also is in fact the grand heart of that triumph- 
ant chapter, the eighth of the epistle to the Eomans. 
If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the 
dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from 
the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by 
his Spirit that dwelleth in you. And the triumph- 
ant strain in the second epistle to the Corinthians 
has the same key-note, the same theme, the same 
conclusion. " We, having the same spirit of faith, 
according as it is written, I believed, and therefore 
have I spoken, we also believe, and therefore speak ; 
knowing that He which raised up the Lord Jesus, 
shall raise up us also by Jesus, and shall present us 
with you. For all things are for your sakes, that 
the abundant grace might through the thanksgiving 
of many redound to the glory of God. For which 
cause we faint not, knowing that our light affliction 
worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal 
weight of glory, and that when the earthly house 
of this tabernacle is dissolved, we have a building 
of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the 
heavens." 

To the same purport is the great passage in the 
epistle to the Philippians. " For our conversation is 
in heaven, from whence also we look for the Saviour, 
the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile 



168 THE RESURRECTION OF THE JUST. 

bodies, that they may be fashioned like unto bis 
glorious body, according to the working whereby 
he is able to subdue all things unto himself." These 
different passages are like the ground waves in a vast 
deep sea, or like the tidal movement of the whole 
body of waters under a heavenly orb. The tide of 
emotion, in faith, hope, joy, love, rolls up in one 
and the same mighty argument, addressed to differ- 
ent minds, at different times, yet always for the whole 
church of Christ, and with the same conclusion. In 
the fifteenth chapter of the first epistle to the Corin- 
thians the argument is drawn out into greater detail 
than anywhere else, not only as to the raising of the 
dead, but as to the kind of body with which the 
dead are to be invested. It is sown in corruption, 
it is raised in incorruption ; it is sown in dishonor, 
it is raised in glory ; it is sown in weakness, it is 
raised in power ; it is sown a material body, it is 
raised a spiritual body. Its model is the Lord from 
heaven ; for as is the heavenly, such are they also 
that are heavenly ; and as we have borne the image 
of the earthly, we shall also bear the image of the 
heavenly. For this corruptible must put on incor- 
ruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. 
So when this corruptible shall have put on incor- 
ruption, and this mortal shall have put on immor- 
tality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that 
is written, Death is swallowed up in victory ! O 
Death where is thy sting, O grave where is thy 
victory ! 

Now we are to remark that all this is not the 
mere resurrection, but the resurrection into the 



THE RESURRECTION OF THE JUST. 169 

image and likeness of Jesus Christ. The two things 
are widely different, although the one is not to be 
conceived apart from the other, and both are merged 
in one and the same mighty event of Christ's 
coming. The bare raising of the dead is not the 
thing which is so much insisted on in the New 
Testament, as perhaps the mightiest to us conceiva- 
ble exercise of God's power ; but the raising of the 
dead in the glo^ of Christ Jesus ; that is, the 
righteous dead, those who sleep in Jesus, to the 
possession, in body as well as spirit, of a sonship of 
God that shall make them joint heirs with Christ, to 
be glorified together with Him. The earnest ex- 
pectation of the creature waiteth for that manifesta- 
tion of the Son of God. And we ourselves also, 
says the Apostle, who have the first fruits of the 
Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, 
waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of 
our body. It is not the resurrection of our body, but 
the redemption, which certainly includes the great 
reality and consummation of glory in the possessed 
and perpetual likeness of Christ. All before that is 
but the earnest of an inheritance until the redemp- 
tion of the purchased possession unto the praise of 
His glory. The bare raising of the dead is not a 
thing so difficult or impossible to conceive, nor does 
it seem to us the most amazing exercise of Divine 
power conceivable ; but the investment of our im- 
mortal being, and change of our mortal, with this 
spiritual and glorified body like unto Christ's is re- 
ferred to as an exercise of Divine power, so entirely 
beyond the possibility of conception by the human 

8 



170 THE RESURRECTION OF THE JUST. 

mind natively, that the Apostle praj^s for an inspira- 
tion, baptism and illumination from above, " that ye 
may know what is the hope of his calling, and what 
the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, 
and what the exceeding greatness of his power to 
usward who believe, according to the working of 
His mighty power which He wrought in Christ, 
when He raised Him from the dead, and set Him at 
His own right hand in the heavenly places, far 
above all principality and power and might and do- 
minion, and every name that is named, not only in 
this world, but also in that which is to come ; and 
hath put all things under His feet, and gave Him to 
be the head over all things to the church, which is 
His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all." 
Now, sitting down before this last passage, if we 
endeavor to analyze the elements, and sound its 
depths of meaning, we speedily find that there are 
involved in it ideas and processes not only sweeping 
the whole universe of God, but rising to the ineffa- 
ble and incommunicable perfections of Jehovah, in 
that light inaccessible and full of glory, to which no 
creature can approach nor hath seen, nor can see. 
And yet this infinite glory of God in Christ Jesus, 
and this exercise of infinite Divine power in His 
resurrection and ascension at the right hand of the 
Father, is presented as the type by which, and ac- 
cording to which, to measure the glory of the re- 
demption of our body. We must consider, there- 
fore, that there is here a transference from the grave 
of mortal flesh to the throne of eternity, a transfer- 
ence of a human being, not indeed ever at any mo- 






THE RESURRECTION OF THE JUST. 171 

merit separate from the Divine, but the transference 
still of the Man Christ Jesus, raised from the dead, 
past all orders of intelligences, angels, archangels, 
principalities, powers, thrones, dominions, almost 
infinite on infinite, past them all, to the very throne 
of God, for it is the throne of God and of the Lamb, 
to which He is exalted ; the transference, or trans- 
figuration and transference, of a body that lay in the 
tomb, quickened, glorified, beyond, far beyond, all 
forms of glory and of power, and all possible con- 
ception of such forms, that had ever been created, 
up to a glory and a lordship, such as the Eternal 
"Word had with the Father before the world was. 
Considering this, we perceive the need of a baptism 
of the soul by the spirit of wisdom and revelation in 
the knowledge of Christ, before we can begin to un- 
derstand the greatness of such a transaction. And 
considering this, we begin to comprehend how un- 
searchable, how incomprehensible is the exercise 
and manifestation of the same Divine power in us, 
according to the working of that mighty power in 
the resurrection and enthroning of Christ with the 
majesty of Supreme Deity, the same Divine power 
in us, according to that pattern; even the investi- 
ture of all the redeemed in Christ, with the same 
likeness and life out of the embrace of death, en- 
throned in glory everlasting ! 

If now we wish for a still more direct confirma- 
tion of this theory, a more explicit proof of this be- 
ing the definite sense to be put upon this passage, 
we have but to turn to that wondrous promise in the 
third chapter of the Eevelation of John, where our 



172 THE RESURRECTION OF THE JUST. 

Saviour says, To him that overcometh will I grant 
to sit with me in my throne, even as I also over- 
came, and am set down with my Father in His 
throne. What is here meant no man can tell this 
side the grave, any more than John could tell 
what the being a joint heir with Christ meant, when 
he said, It doth not yet appear what we shall be, 
but we know that when He shall appear, we shall 
be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. But 
that is meant, whatever it be, which the Apostle 
prays, in such strong and fervent language for grace 
to understand, that which is shadowed forth in the 
description of the mighty power of God, when 
Christ Jesus himself was raised from the dead, and 
seated on the throne of eternity. His prayer is, 
that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father 
of Glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom 
and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of 
your understanding being enlightened, that ye may 
know what is the hope of His calling, and what the 
riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, 
and what the exceeding greatness of His power to 
usward who believe, according to the greatness of 
His mighty power which He wrought in Christ, 
when he raised Him from the dead, and set Him at 
His own right hand, in the heavenly places. The 
illumination, divine, supernatural, by the Holy 
Spirit, is here prayed for, that we may know some- 
thing of this glory here and now, even in this mor- 
tal state, that it may not be to us as a succession of 
unknown hieroglyphics, but revealed to our hearts at 
least, by the Spirit ; but to know it absolutely and 



THE RESURRECTION OF THE JUST. 173 

perfectly here, is impossible, and therefore there is 
here just such a hyperbole of thought, logic, ex- 
pression, as in that other wondrous prayer, that we 
might comprehend with all saints what is the length 
and depth and breadth and height, and know the 
love of Christ, which passeih knowledge, and be filled 
with all the fullness of Grod. In either case, in both 
cases, it passes knowledge indeed ; and what defi- 
nitely is meant, we cannot know, till we ourselves, 
and Christ in us, and we in Christ, are revealed in 
eternity. A meaning in any sense answering to 
those amazing words of God and promises of Christ, 
a meaning in any sense corresponding to that 
astonishing declaration, that Christ Jesus, who is 
now seated on the throne of the universe, will give 
to the overcoming believer to sit down with Him on 
His throne, as He is seated with the Father on His 
throne, must surpass the possibility of our present 
faculties and state to know, and must shadow forth 
a glory utterly beyond our conception. And we are 
reminded by such expressions of the declaration of 
the inspired Apostle concerning even himself and 
his fellow Christians, that now we know only in 
part, and that here we see only as through a glass 
darkly. It is not dimly that we see, but in fact, in 
comparison with that which is to be seen, in com- 
parison with the excess of glory and of light soon to 
be revealed, we see darkly ! What then will it be, 
when we know even as we are known ! 



^toak-eniitjj in (M'a ITilunm 

In the fifteenth verse of the seventeenth Psalm, 
David exclaims, "I shall be satisfied, when I awake, 
with thy likeness. I will behold thy face in right- 
eousness." In the 15th verse of the 49 th Psalm 
David says, speaking of the universal death of 
mankind, " But God will redeem my soul from the 
power of the grave, for he shall receive me" This 
is precisely similar to the language of the 73d 
Psalm, " Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and 
afterwards receive me to glory.' Before this recep- 
tion into glory there comes the sleep of death. 
The repose of the grave is before the resurrection, 
and the resurrection is not from death merely, but 
from the grave. Death, and the lying down in the 
grave, are as a sleep, from which the resurrection is 
an awakening. This was Job's and David's con- 
ception of it; this was Paul's exhibition of it. 
Paul loved to present death as a quiet, peaceful 
slumber in the Lord. "I would not have you to be 
ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are 
asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which 
have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died 
and rose again, even so, them also which sleep in 



AWAKENING IN GOD'S LIKENESS. 175 

Jesus will Cod bring with him. He that raised up 
Christ from the dead shall alsoquicken your mortal 
bodies by his spirit that dwelleth in you." They 
that sleep in Jesus are to be raised by virtue of his 
resurrection, as they have been forgiven and justified 
by virtue of his death, and sanctified by the grace 
of his spirit. Christ is risen from the dead, and be- 
come the first fruits of them that slept. He is the 
first born from the dead, the beginning ; that in all 
things he might have the preeminence ; Christ the 
first fruits, afterwards they that are Christ's at his 
coming. All will not sleep, nor be raised. There 
will be those living in the body, when Christ cometh 
to judgment, who will not go down to the grave. 
There will be a world of people, as living, as active, 
perhaps as careless, as the world at this day, when 
the peal of the last trumpet breaks upon the uni- 
verse. There will be believers, perhaps a multi- 
tude, who shall never see death. But all will be 
changed ; and what the resurrection is to those who 
sleep in the grave, the change will be to those who 
are living when the graves are opened. But the 
dead in Christ, they that sleep in Jesus, will be 
raised first of all, in an incorruptible, glorious, celes- 
tial body, and then all living believers will be 
changed into the same body, so that the effect will 
be the same with them, as the awakening from the 
sleep of the grave with those who slumber there. 
This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this 
mortal must put on immortality. Whatever be the 
process going on, while the sleep of death con- 
tinues, it is a sleep in Jesus, from which the awak- 



176 AWAKENING IN GOD'S LIKENESS. 

erring will be the positive entrance of the soul into 
everlasting life, in an immortal, incorruptible, spirit- 
ual, glorified body. 

Now, the glory of that awakening passes all con- 
ception, this side the grave. It is clear that it is of 
the nature of an awakening ; that is the word best 
fitted for it. There must be something like a dream, 
a sleep : the language of inspiration clearly intimates 
as much. There are no processes of nature that 
meet the case, except by faint analogy, such as the 
grain of wheat falling into the ground, and dying, 
and then awakening into the light of day, and the 
green, fresh life of sunny nature; or such as the 
chrysalis, the grub, the worm, awakening from 
darkness and deformity, from a confinement to earth, 
into illimitable freedom, in exquisite beauty of form 
and color, on bright, glittering wings, in the pure 
liquid air. But these wondrous transformations and 
resurrections are of things material and corruptible, 
with all their loveliness, and can by no means shadow 
forth the yet incomprehensible glory of a change 
from the material to the spiritual, from the corrupti- 
ble to the incorruptible, from the sleep of the grave 
to the glories of eternity. Whatever be the nature 
of that sleep, whatever the state of the soul while the 
body is in the grave, the awakening from it will be 
a surprise of infinite and overwhelming glory. The 
grand surpassing thought in it is that of the likeness 
of God ; and who can arrive in this world at any 
adequate conception of that glory? For a sinful 
creature to find itself suddenly and entirely perfect 
in God's likeness, would itself be a surprise and a 



AWAKENING IN GOD'S LIKENESS. 177 

blissfalness overwhelming, even here. For a creature 
to lie down in death, in this body of sin, with all the 
consciousness of sinfulness, which accompanies most 
vividly the most holy in this world ; for a sinful 
creature thus to lie down in the cradle of the dj^ing 
body, rocked there to sleep, as by the Saviour's love, 
and then, out of that sleep, to awake in God's perfect 
likeness! All the images and analogies that we 
could summon to our aid would fail to convey any 
appropriate imagination or description of it. If a 
man were translated from the deepest dungeons into 
the light of noon, that would be nothing — if a man 
were snatched from the central deserts of Arabia, 
and transported into the fresh, cool verdure of gar- 
dens like the Paradise of Eden, that would be nothing 
— if, out of the dark, unfathomed caves of ocean, a 
prisoner should rise to the bright air of day, and the 
open life of creation, that would be nothing. For, 
oh! there is nothing to compare with the change 
from the sinfulness of a fallen race into the holiness 
of God — from the gloom and corruption of a body 
of sin and death, into the spirituality, the light, the 
glory, the dazzling radiance, the infinite purity, of 
the glorified body of the incarnate Son of God ! 

Take Job, as a child of God, and suppose him 
dying, amidst his extreme affliction and suffering. 
Take David, with all his attainments, in advanced 
old age. Think of his decrepid frame, stiffening and 
helpless, health and warmth deserting it, with his 
mind perhaps verging towards second childhood ; 
and can any imagination conceive the change from 
such bondage, imprisonment and weakness, into the 

8* 



178 AWAKENING IN GOD'S LIKENESS. 

perfect likeness of God? Take Lazarus, full of 
sores — take Latimer, burning at the stake — take 
Baxter or Flavel — and look at the form and state 
of their mortality, and see if you can command any 
imagination of the overwhelming surprise of glory 
comprehended, of necessity, in a translation and 
transfiguration into God's own likeness. We may 
take the experience of the dying Payson, one of 
the nearest approximations of heaven to earth, and 
of earth to heaven, ever known; but even there, 
great as was the tide of ineffable happiness God was 
pouring through his soul, yet there is nothing that 
can convey to us an adequate image of the astonish- 
ment of wonder and of rapture with which such a 
being must find himself awakened, in immortal life, 
in God's own perfect likeness. 

The consideration of this subject brings together 
and illustrates a great number of passages both in 
the Old and New Testament, but especially in Paul's 
epistles, all shedding a grand and glorious light on 
one another. Of this nature is that expression of 
Paul in the epistle to the Philippians, That I may 
"know him, and the power of his resurrection, in con- 
nection with that great prayer for illumination, by 
the spirit, in the epistle to the Ephesians, on which 
we have already dwelt. These passages are illus- 
trated with great glory, when we bring David's 
wonderful expres'sions in the 16th and 17th psalms 
in connection with them, showing the dependence 
of the church in body and soul upon, and its con- 
nection with Christ's resurrection. The power of 
his resurrection is not only that power by which he 



AWAKENING IN GOD'S LIKENESS. 179 

■ 

himself was raised, but that efficacy of his resurrec- 
tion, by which (as he is the head, and believers are 
his body) the body, and every member of it, will 
experience the same glorious resurrection with the 
head. For our conversation, says Paul in another 
passage to Philippians, is in heaven, from whence also 
we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who 
shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned 
like unto his glorious body, according to the work- 
ing whereby he is able even to subdue all things 
unto himself. And again, he is the Saviour of the 
body, and we are members of his body, of his flesh, 
and of his bones. With this stands connected that 
expression, Christ in you the hope of glory, and 
also, in the same first chapter of Colossians, the 
mention of Christ's death and resurrection, accord- 
ing to the pleasure of the Father, having made peace 
through the blood of his cross, by him, in the body 
of his flesh through death, to present the saints, 
holy, and unblamable, and unreprovable in his sight, 
without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing, without 
fault before the throne of God in his likeness. 

Also here are illustrated those passages in the 
eighth chapter of Eomans, in connection with the 5th 
chapter of the 2d Corinthians, and the 4th and 5th 
of the 1st Thessalonians with the first chapter of the 
second epistle to the same ; all, parts of one and the 
same magnificent and mighty anthem, looking for, 
hastening unto, and yearning after the coming of 
the day of Christ, and the glory to be revealed 
when he shall come to be admired in his saints, to 
shine out in them, and they in him, according to 



180 AWAKENING IN GOD'S LIKENESS. 

that expression, " When he, who is our life shall ap- 
pear, then shall je also appear with him in glory." 
Then shall be that manifestation of the sons of 
God, for which the earnest expectation of the crea- 
ture waiteth, and that redemption of the body, for 
which the soul, even in the enjoyment of the first- 
fruits of the spirit, yearneth and groaneth. And 
here are illustrated all those fervent and almost im- 
patient desires after Christ's appearing, expressed so 
frequently in the New Testament, and which be- 
came so habitual and peculiar a characteristic of the 
saints, that they were described as those who long 
for his appearing. For then only would they ap- 
pear with him in glory, then only be delivered from 
this body of sin and death, and through their trans- 
formation into the likeness of Christ's glorified body, 
obtain a full introduction in that body of light, into 
the knowledge and enjoyment of all the glories of 
the celestial world. And hence, too, the anathemas 
pronounced against those pernicious infidels, who 
denied that Christ had come in the flesh, as well as 
those who denied his resurrection. And hence the 
frequent repetition by our blessed Lord, in his ser- 
mon on this subject in the sixth of John, of that 
cheering passage of promise to the believer, And I 
will, raise him up at the last day; a thing impos- 
sible except by the coming, dying, rising, and su- 
preme glorification and enthronement of Christ in 
his mediatorial kingdom. 

We have cause to believe that one of the reasons 
inducing the assumption by our blessed Lord of a 
human body for accomplishing the work of redemp- 



AWAKENING IN GOD'S LIKENESS. 181 

tion was the utter impossibility, except by such in- 
carnation, and our transfiguration into, and possess- 
ion of, its image and glory, in a body like Christ's, 
that we could ever see God. For he dwelleth in 
light inaccessible, whom no man hath seen, nor can 
see ; and this impossibility of seeing God in that in- 
accessible light, of beholding God's face in right- 
eousness, and of awakening in his likeness, could be 
taken away only by God in Christ becoming man, 
God manifest in the flesh, assuming a mortal body, 
which itself, by the power of the divinity in Christ's 
own death and resurrection, should be changed, 
glorified, and formed a type, according to which, 
and according to that alone, and by transfiguration 
like it, it would be possible to be admitted amidst 
the glories of heaven, with the possibility of com- 
muning with .them and understanding them. Our 
utter incapacity now to form any definite concep- 
tions of the glories of the heavenly world may be 
the want of that very medium, through which alone 
the heavenly world can be definitely seen and con- 
versed with, that body which is the image and like- 
ness of Christ's body. When clothed upon with 
that house which is from heaven, then the soul will 
see and understand, and then it will be satisfied. 
It will be as familiar with the scenes of heaven as 
the angels are, and those scenes will be as familiar 
and as suited to the souls of the redeemed in Christ's 
image in their glorified spiritual body, as to the souls 
of angels. But it may be absolutely impossible, 
without that spiritual organization, to come into 



182 AWAKENING IN GOD'S LIKENESS. 

such communion with, the spiritual world, as that 
after which David was longing, that to which all 
the redeemed are advancing, that which all the 
angels, and the spirits of the just made perfect, for- 
ever enjoy. 



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The Sabbath of this announcement was one of 
tbe most marked in tbe ministry of our Saviour. 
It was that in wbicb, after a great and merciful mir- 
acle of healing, he justified to the Jews his own 
working on the Sabbath day by the example of 
God himself, the Creator and providential governor 
of the universe. And when the Jews interpreted 
that as making himself equal with God, our blessed 
Lord, instead of disavowing any intention of claim- 
ing such equality, went on to declare and explain it 
still more distinctly. 

He revealed to the Jews the great fact that all 
works whatsoever which the Father doeth, the same 
doeth the Son likewise, and that even as the Father 
raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them, even so 
the Son quickeneth whom he will. Moreover he 
told them that all judgment was committed to the 
Son, in order that all should honor the Son as they 
honor the Father. He told them that the hour was 
coming, and even then was, when the dead in tres- 
passes and sins should hear the voice of the Son of 
God, and they that heard should live. For that, as 
the Father had life in himself, so had he given to 



184 THE RESURRECTION OF DAMNATION. 

the Son to have life in himself, and authority to ex- 
ecute judgment also, because he was not only the 
Son of God but the Son of man. He told them 
that they need not marvel at that announcement, 
for the hour was coming in which all that were in 
the graves should hear his voice, and should come 
forth ; they that have done good unto the resurrec- 
tion of life, and they that have done evil unto the 
resurrection of damnation. A series of disclosures 
was here made to the people, in regard to the char- 
acter and glory of Christ, of amazing magnitude 
and importance, but with the plainest simplicity 
and distinctness. Announcement followed announce- 
ment, with the grandeur of great thunder-bursts of 
truth from heaven, yet in serene calmness and 
majesty, and with a plainness that could neither be 
questioned nor misunderstood. It was God mani- 
fest in the flesh, revealing himself in that form, as 
possessing divine authority and attributes, the 
Author of life, the Eedeemer and Judge of man, the 
Arbiter of all the destinies and results both of the 
resurrection of life and the resurrection of damnation. 
This was a wondrous sermon. Its texts are of 
an unfathomable meaning in vastness and glory. 
It was like taking up great mountains and throwing 
them into the sea. And indeed, with what an 
almost confounding weight must these disclosures 
of the two Kesurrections have fallen upon the minds 
of our Lord's hearers! We can almost hear the 
fire-side report made by one of them as he went 
home to tell to his family what the great Prophet 
had been saying to the people. "He spake as 



THE RESURRECTION OF DAMNATION. 185 

never man spake. He told us that all things for 
time, death, and eternity, were committed into his 
hands, and that he, just as God the Father, had the 
power of life, death, and the judgment. He told us 
of the resurrection. He said that he himself was 
the Lord of it, and could raise the dead, and 
quicken whom he would. He told us of the resur- 
rection of life, and how every one who would be- 
lieve in Grod through his word should have ever- 
lasting life, and should pass from death unto life, 
and never more see condemnation. But 0, he told 
us more than that ; he told us of the resurrection of 
damnation ; and when he told of that, it was with 
tones of such tenderness and sorrow, yet solemnity 
and awe, it was with such profound and overwhelm 
ing conviction accompanying the manner and the 
words in our souls, it fell from his lips upon us, not 
idly nor speculatively, as the Pharisees talk, but 
with such exceeding and eternal weight of truth 
and earnestness, that indeed it seemed as if the judg 
ment had come, and Gehenna's gates stood open be 
fore us, and we were entering in. Yes, he told us 
of the resurrection of damnation ; and I, who nevei 
before trembled at what our prophets have spoken, 
nor at what John spake of the fire unquenchable, 
when he warned us to flee from the wrath, felt this 
in mine inmost soul. The resurrection of damna- 
tion ! The resurrection of damnation ! The words 
still ring in mine ears. Oh what shall we do to 
escape the resurrection of damnation?" 

Yes, even so, without all question : such was the 
preaching of Christ. The most burning revelations 



186 THE RESURRECTION OF DAMNATION. 

of hell and of heaven came from His words ; and 
such, we doubt not, was the effect again and again 
produced upon the souls of His hearers. And here, 
again, we observe the reverberation of the tones 
and expressions of the Spirit of God from the Old 
Testament into the New, and from the New into the 
Old. Our blessed Lord was preaching simply what 
had been taught from the beginning of the revelation 
of God; and here, on this occasion, He had been 
referring to what was plainly set down in the Book 
of the Prophet Daniel. And when He said that all 
judgment was committed into His hands, because 
He was the Son of man, He referred to the descrip- 
tion of the dominion of the Son of man coming in 
the clouds of heaven, seen in the night visions of 
Daniel. And when He spoke of the resurrection of 
life, and the resurrection of damnation, what was it 
but a Divine illumination and paraphrase of the 
great resurrection-text in Daniel, that they who sleep 
in the dust of the earth, shall awake, some to ever- 
lasting life, and some to shame and everlasting con- 
tempt ; when they that be wise shall shine as the 
brightness of the firmament; and they that turn 
many to righteousness, as the stars forever and ever ? 
In truth, the Old Testament declarations on this and 
other subjects were as the frame and canvas of a 
vast transparency prepared and sketched of God ; 
while Christ and His Spirit and teachings in the New 
Testament are as the light from heaven, lighting all 
within, illuminating all the figures, and shining forth 
through them to all the world with such power and 
plainness, that he who runs may read. 



THE KESUBRECTION OF DAMNATION. 187 

Christ it was, and His Spirit indeed, that spake 
through all the prophets ; but when Christ came on 
earth as the Word made flesh, then the Divine pre- 
dictions in Daniel and all others became incarnate 
in Him, and the truth was seen and felt, no more in 
the difficulty or dimness of prophetic hieroglyphics, 
but living, moving, acting. The words that Christ 
uttered came as tongues of flame from the eternal 
world, touching men's souls as with fire; and all 
His revelations concerning the future retribution for 
the wicked assumed an awful distinctness, whether 
investing selected persons standing for classes of 
men, as Lazarus and Dives, and couched beneath 
the coloring and imagery of heaven and hell, per- 
sonifying realities, or pealed forth in decisive lan- 
guage, as sharp and startling as the Archangel's 
trumpet, These shall go away into everlasting pun- 
ishment ; but the righteous, into life eternal ! 

Now, this powerful form of contrast adopted in 
the last sentence is familiar both in the Old and New 
Testament, but far more direct and startling in the 
New. Whatever of glory and blessedness there is 
known to be in the resurrection of life, we may and 
must, with certainty, conclude right the opposite in 
the resurrection of damnation. Experience, in both 
cases, deserts us, and we are thrown upon God's 
word. But there is a kind of predictive and corro- 
borative experience, which we possess in each case, 
through the Spirit of God, and the revelation in our 
own consciousness, which is exceedingly powerful. 
The Spirit of God producing, in souls submissive 
and believing, a hungering and thirsting after righte- 



188 THE RESURRECTION OF DAMNATION. 

ousness in God's likeness, shows, beforehand, some- 
thing of the glory to be revealed, in the event of an 
awaking in that likeness. The happiness arising, 
even in this world, even out of these desires after 
God, is sometimes so great, that it is like an experi- 
ence of heaven — like being filled with all the fulness 
of God. And jnst so the Spirit of God, and men's 
own convictions, together with their dread and fore- 
boding of punishment, produce in the conscience of 
the wicked a sense of guilt, and a terror of coming 
wrath, which is sometimes insupportable ; a sight of 
their own defilement and depravity, in the likeness 
of Satan, and in contrast with the character of a 
holy God, which produces some experimental de- 
monstration of the terror of an awakening in the 
image of fiends. 

To a mind that has any proper appreciation of 
the difference between holiness and sin, any true 
knowledge of the character of God, any sense of 
God's holiness, any true conviction of guilt, and 
sense of the evil of sin, there could be nothing more 
terrible than the contemplation of such an awaken- 
ing, nothing so dreadful as the prospect or the fear 
of it in one's own case. There could be no descrip- 
tion of the world of woe more terrific than this, that 
it is a world of unmingled and eternal depravity. 
And this is the least we can possibly make out of it, 
namely, that that depravity of our nature, which is 
here restricted, negatived, and neutralized, even 
with the worst, and made oftentimes to assume 
many insinuating, amiable and pleasing forms, will 
there be perfectly developed, without any restric- 



THE RESURRECTION OF DAMNATION. 189 

tion, any neutralization, any disguise. This is the 
world of seeds, of causes, and of tendencies ; that is 
the world of harvests, of results, and of perfected 
and eternal consequences. There will be no mix- 
ture of causes or of character there, but perfect, 
defecated wickedness, purified from all mixture of 
good, and. incurably, immutably, everlastingly evil. 
There will be nothing but the scum and dross of 
creation. It is rising to the surface here, and in pro- 
cess of development and of separation from the 
precious metal. It is mingled and separating now 
because the very system under which we live 
through the interposition of Christ, is that of proba 
tion and grace, for such development and separation 
that character may be. perfectly tried and known 
that all who wish to become good, may, and that 
the righteous may be perfectly purified. But there 
the scum and dross will be gathered and flung away 
by itself, according to that significant declaration of 
the Psalmist, Thou puttest away all the wicked of 
the earth like dross. Many shall be purified and 
made white, and tried ; but the wicked shall still do 
wickedly, and all forms of evil character will go on 
to fill up their measures of iniquity, and there must 
be an eternal separation, without any more combi- 
nation. It must be so, for the defence of God's 
own character, for the sake of His righteousness and 
justice, and for the purity of heaven itself. Other- 
wise there would lie against God's government 
there, and against the possibility of unmingled 
blessedness there, the same objections that are 
brought here ; according to that very striking pas- 



190 THE RESURRECTION OF DAMNATION. 

sage in Jeremiah, where the prophet, describing the 
uselessness and misery of a state of society where 
justice is not executed, but the evil are permitted to 
mingle successfully with the good, corrupting and 
corrupted, observes that a the bellows are burned, 
the lead is consumed of the fire, and the founder 
melteth in vain, because the wicked are not plucked 
away." 

But there will be nothing of this at the resurrec- 
tion, but each world and system, of the righteous 
and the wicked, will be alone in its perfection. 
There will be no such thing there as a growth of 
character which is half tares and half grain, but all 
will be either tares or grain solely. The tares will 
be gathered into bundles to burn them, and the 
grain into God's barn. Here, a man going into the 
field, can hardly tell, sometimes, what is wheat and 
what are tares, and sometimes even the same ear 
will seem one side grain and the other tares ; but it 
cannot be so at the end of all things, when character 
will be developed and discerned in infinite perfec- 
tion. The angels shall come forth, and shall sepa- 
rate the evil from the good. The opposite and 
conflicting elements of character and of being will 
draw off to opposite extremes, opposite worlds, and 
there will be nothing but eternal and unchangeable 
fixtures of holiness and blessedness or of sin and 
misery. 

Now, just as, if Christ be in you, though the body 
must die because of sin, yet the spirit is life because 
of righteousness, and He that raised up Christ from 
the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by 



THE RESURRECTION OF DAMNATION. 191 

His Spirit that dwelleth in you ; just so, if Christ be 
not in you, then, as the body must die because of 
sin, so body and soul must remain in sin, for there 
is no spirit of life to raise the body in Christ ; but 
you are under the law of sin and of death, and yours 
is the carnal mind which is enmity against God, 
and the spirit in you is death because of wickedness. 
And as it is the work of the spirit of life to make a 
spiritual body, so it is the work of the spirit of 
death to make a corrupted and corruptible body. He 
that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life 
everlasting ; but he that soweth to the flesh shall o± 
the flesh reap corruption. And as the body of the 
resurrection of life is a glorified body suited to the 
character of the holy soul, and growing out of it, in 
the likeness of Christ, by the Spirit of Christ, so the 
body of the resurrection of damnation will be 
equally suited to the character of the sinful soul, 
growing out of that, by the spirit of death and of 
evil, a deformed and tormented body in the likeness 
of fiends. So that, although the awakening to shame 
and everlasting contempt spoken of beforehand in 
Daniel, seems a faint and mild form of the predic- 
tion of retribution, as compared with the figures 
and realities used by our Saviour, yet, interpreted 
by those, as it must be, and illuminated by the 
glare of that fiery corruption reaped from sow- 
ing to the flesh, it conveys a most terrific and 
tremendous meaning. What but a shame and ever- 
lasting contempt by us inconceivable can await the 
soul of the wicked, awakening in a body as de- 
formed as the soul ; in a body of infernal spirituality, 



192 THE RESURRECTION OF DAMNATION. 

which, with, the same translucent power of a celestial 
body, will convey, and answer to, without any con- 
cealment or imperfection, the whole corruption of 
the soul, its real, undisguised, unmingled character 
of perfect evil. 

For such it must be, to answer to that declaration 
of Christ, Depart ye cursed. For nothing, in which 
any mixture of good remained, could have such a 
curse from God ; and anything bearing such a curse 
must be a terror and contempt to itself as well as a 
terror and contempt to the universe. And it is quite 
as impossible to conceive the overwhelming horror 
of surprise, in which a wicked soul will rise in such 
accursed deformity of utter wickedness in the resur- 
rection of damnation, as it it impossible to conceive 
the overwhelming surprise of glory and blessedness, 
in which the holy soul will rise in God's perfect 
likeness. Take the case of the rich man given by 
our blessed Lord, as we have already taken the 
case of Lazarus amidst his sores, his sufferings, his 
wretchedness, on earth, with the dogs for his com- 
panions, to show how impossible it is for us to con- 
ceive the overwhelming surprise of blessedness and 
glory to him, when he found himself conveyed by 
angels, in God's own likeness, into the bliss of heaven ; 
take the case of the rich man amidst his sumptuous 
living, his costly and splendid array, his crowd of 
waiting servants and of friends, all ministering to 
his pleasures, all praising his virtues, all treating him 
with marked and uninterrupted respect ; and who 
can conceive the overwhelming surprise of horror 
with which he awoke on d ying, and in hell lifted 



THE RESURRECTION OP DAMNATION. 193 

up his eyes being in torments ? Who can conceive 
the awfulness of the man's terror and despair, in 
finding out his own character ! No wonder that 
our Lord has said there shall be weeping and gnash- 
ing of teeth. 

And let it be remembered that it is our blessed 
Lord himself who has said all these things. And 
though the carping unbeliever sometimes endeavors 
to countenance his attacks upon Cod's word by 
shooting his envenomed arrows at what he calls the 
hard and cruel things of the Old Testament, yet 
let it be remembered that for every threatening of 
evil to the wicked there, you will find incom- 
parably greater terribleness and distinctness of retri- 
bution shrouded in the words of our Eedeemer. 
Nay, not shrouded, but the shroud taken off, the 
covering in the Old Testament removed, and every- 
thing in the preaching of Christ made as if we stood 
ourselves on the burning verges of heaven and hell, 
and beheld, with our own eyes, their realities. For 
truth itself was incarnated in Christ, and as he was 
the Word made flesh, so the reports from heaven 
and hell in the Old Testament, coming through his 
lips, seem living and moving as incarnate forms 
among us. 

Poor rich man ! destined to such an awakening ! 
could not some one, armed with the truth of heaven, 
have gone in at some of his grand feasts, and told 
him what was before him ? Could not some earnest 
friend have said to him, Dear sir, you are close upon 
your mortal sickness, and you are not prepared for 
death, and when you die, from all this luxury you 

9 



194 THE RESURRECTION OF DAMNATION. 

will wake up in unmingled wickedness, contempt 
and misery ! But if there had been such a faithful 
messenger, one among a thousand, what would have 
been his reception ? Have you no more manners, 
the rich man would have answered, than to bring 
your untimely croakings here in the midst of my 
company and pleasures? Away with your libels 
upon God and human nature, as if God were not a 
God who loves to see his creatures enjoying them- 
selves ! As if man were a being of so much wick- 
edness as to be destined to the state which you call 
hell! Aye, but there stands Christ's own word, 
In hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torments. 
Poor rich man! had he no friends, nor warning 
messengers to entreat and save him. Oh yes ! he 
had many ! He had Moses and the Prophets. He 
had David describing to him his own state and 
danger. He had Daniel telling him of the resurrec- 
tion of the wicked. He had God's word, God's 
providences, God's mercies, seeking to bring him to 
repentance ; but all in vain. 

Now, for what purpose are these disclosures? 
Have I any pleasure at all in the death of him that 
dieth ? saith the Lord ; and was it any pleasure to our 
Blessed Redeemer, to unveil the secrets of the world 
of woe ? Is it not all in mercy, all in love, that he 
puts for us, in such vivid light, the resurrection of 
life on one side, and the resurrection of damnation 
on the other, and bids us choose ? 



In the miglity transactions of the judgment, how 
solemn and awful is the instrumentality of the 
angels of God ! The Son of man shall send forth 
his angels. They are the angels of Christ ; and as 
to their number, it seems to be intimated that all 
heaven, all the holy beings in God's universe, will 
be his ministers in the transactions of that day. 
The Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the 
holy angels with him. The Lord Jesus shall be re- 
vealed from Heaven with his mighty angels, in 
flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know 
not God, and that obey not the Gospel of our Lord 
Jesus Christ. There was, in the antediluvian world, 
a prediction of the scene, and a foreshowing of 
the Lord's coming. For Enoch, the seventh from 
Adam, prophesied, saying, "Behold the Lord 
cometh with ten thousand of his saints, to execute 
judgment upon all, and to convince all that are un- 
godly of all their ungodly deeds which they have 
ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches, 
which ungodly sinners have spoken against him." 
And at a later period, as an advancing step in this 
revelation, we have the sublime delineation in 



196 THE WORK OF THE ANGEL REAPERS. 

Daniel. " I beheld till the Ancient of days did sit, 
whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of 
His head like the pure wool ; His throne was like 
the fiery flame, and His wheels as burning fire. A 
fiery stream issued and came forth from before Him ; 
thousand thousands ministered unto Him, and ten 
thousand times ten thousand stood before Him ; the 
judgment was set, and the books were opened. 

"What multitudes on multitudes, countless, incon- 
ceivable, are here •represented! Each as a flaming 
fire, each as the lightning, in power, swiftness, and 
glory ! Who can conceive the unimaginable gran- 
deur, the awful splendor of that day ! All that 
ever went before, of God's judgments, were but 
faint symbols of this. God's coming on Sinai was 
terrible in grandeur, yea, of intolerable sublimity 
and glory; yet it was little compared with this. 
All the efforts of the human mind fail before the 
inconceivable magnitude and majesty of this final 
reality, this last whirlwind blaze, this ministration 
of flaming intelligences amidst material burnings, 
this manifestation and execution of the Divine attri- 
butes in the unrestricted fulness of their hitherto 
veiled and restrained glory, this final development 
of judgment and of retribution by the agency of all 
the brightest and mightiest holy beings in the uni- 
verse of God ! There have been dreams of these 
things ; men have been visited in the night visions 
with appalling bursts of the light, the glory, and 
the terror of this last day, so that they have awaked 
in anguish uncontrollable ; and some in words and 
images of fire have told the scenery through which 



THE WORK OF THE ANGEL REAPERS. 197 

their dreams have carried them ; but no possible 
imagery can adequately realize this last transaction 
to the mind. 

The angels of God, as presented in the parable 
of the tares, are the reapers of the final har- 
vest. They are commissioned by the Son of man 
to gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, 
and them which do iniquity. They are thus to 
sever the wicked from among the just. They are 
to gather first the tares in bundles, preparatory to 
what follows. They are to make this great and 
final separation of the evil from the good, before 
they are cast into that world, in which the foun- 
tains of the great deep of retribution will be broken 
up upon them. They are supposed to know, in- 
stantly and unerringly, the objects of their search. 
There can be not a moment's doubt or hesitation. 
The tares and the wheat will both be disclosed in 
perfection. A good angel on this commission will 
have no more difficulty in knowing, as quick as 
thought, an evil being from this world, than he 
would have in discovering an angel of darkness 
from the bottomless pit. As in the resurrection, the 
awakening of the wicked will be to shame and 
everlasting contempt, in the character and likeness 
of unalloyed evil, while the good will shine out as 
the stars of the firmament in brightness, so in the 
change that will take place with all the living at 
the last day, all the growing tares then above ground 
will put off, with their mortal covering, all character 
but evil, and will develop all of evil that before 
was concealed. So that the passage of the light- 



198 THE WORK OF THE ANGEL REAPERS. 

ning cannot be more swift, than the knowledge 
where the lightning should strike ; and the angels 
that are to gather the tares into bundles, will have 
no more difficulty or uncertainty as to the indica- 
tions of their work, in gathering out of Christ's 
kingdom all things that offend, and them that do 
iniquity, than those who are to gather the bright 
shining golden sheaves of wheat, to transport them 
into God's garner. What a harvest-home will that 
be, what a procession of glory, what songs of re- 
joicing, what melodies of heavenly blessedness, 
when the reaper's work is done, and the companies 
of white-winged seraphs convey their glorious 
sheaves, their gathered multitudes of the redeemed, 
into the presence of God and the Lamb ! And on 
the other hand, what a harvest-home of misery, 
what a procession of terror, amidst weeping and 
wailing and gnashing of teeth, with the majesty and 
overwhelming glory of Halleluia anthems to the 
divine justice vindicated, when the reaper's work is 
done upon the tares, and the bundles of evil are 
carried to their own place ! 

And here we find, very clearly revealed, the 
principle of association, according to which the 
reaper's work is to be accomplished, when they bind 
the tares in bundles to be burned. The law of 
socialism, which men talk about so carelessly, may 
be, when fully realized and carried out, an infinitely 
terrible thing. These bundles of the tares mean, in 
all probability, that in the day of judgment and of 
retribution like will be gathered to like, forms of 
evil with kindred forms, peculiar refinements and 



THE WORK OF THE ANGEL REAPERS. 199 

hideousness of evil character with, similar hideous- 
ness. This probability becomes quite a revealed 
certainty when we compare the note of the bundles 
in the parable of the tares with the category given 
by John in the 21st chapter of the Eevelation, 
where he says that the fearful, and unbelieving, and 
the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, 
and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have 
their part in the lake that burneth with fire and 
brimstone ; which is the second death ; and also with 
the various notices, throughout the Scriptures, of 
the variety of degrees in which punishment is to be 
meted out of justice, and assumed by the sinner, ac- 
cording to the forms and degrees of his light and 
wickedness. And this makes a terrible demonstra- 
tion of the nature of hell, considered as formed out 
of the combustion of the elements of sinful charac- 
ter, out of the necessary play and growth of princi- 
ples of evil, out of the combination, concentration, 
and perfect development of specific forms of sin. 
For if we will but apply this supposition even to 
our own world, we may see, by what it would be 
here, something of the tremendous reality of evil 
which it must be hereafter. Suppose that in this 
world men of similar evil dispositions and crimes 
were assorted and bound together, and left to the 
full development of those evil habits and tendencies. 
Suppose that all the murderers were gathered into 
one set, one community, and all the revengeful, 
cruel and passionate into another, and all the liars 
into another, and all the fraudful and dishonest into 
another, and all the proud, haughty, scornful and 



200 THE WORK OF THE ANGEL REAPERS. 

ambitious into another, and all unbelievers and cor- 
rupters of the truth into another, and all adulterers 
and sensualists into another, and all drunkards and 
intemperate into another, and all the profane 
swearers and blasphemers into another, and were 
thus left to themselves, and to the unrestrained 
growth and conflict of their respective depraved 
tendencies, chosen sins, vile, vicious habits, and 
abandoned, profligate practices. How unimaginably 
and intolerably dreadful and hateful would society 
become, even here upon earth ! It is not so now, 
simply and solely because of God's restraining 
mercy in the arrangements of His providence and 
grace. He so governs the world, restraining its 
superfluity of wrath, that one passion in society 
modifies and confines another, even by the very 
selfishness of men. And it is just because every 
part of society is made up of all varieties of depravi- 
ty, that depravity does not, in any one direction, go 
so far as to make our earth an absolute hell before- 
hand. But suppose all restraint withdrawn, and 
the associative principle in evil left to work itself 
completely out, in its fullest perfection and power, 
and then consequences would ensue, which might 
almost make the mind insane, even to follow them 
in imagination. 

It was something like this idea that the poet 
Dante pursued with such terrific minuteness and 
horror of detail, in his tremendous delineation of 
the compartments of a moral and material hell. 
And the inscription, which that mighty poet has 
read, as traced in lurid fire over hell's portals, 



THE WOEK OF THE ANGEL EEAPERS. 201 

shows a theology deeper, truer, more scriptural, in 
his mind, and in the minds of multitudes for whom 
he wrote, in the middle ages, than that of multitudes 
of sickly sentimentalists since the Reformation. 
The theology of David and Paul, the one by emi- 
nence the inspired poet, and the other the inspired 
logician, of true Christianity, and thatof Dante and of 
Jonathan Edwards, the theological poet of the mid- 
dle ages in Italy, and the theological logician of the 
modern world in New England, meet and coincide 
in that description. The united attributes of Divine 
Justice, Divine Power, and Divine Love, are recog- 
nized in the eternal punishment of all the incorrigi- 
bly wicked. 

" Through me you pass into the city of woe : 
Through me you pass into eternal pain : 
Through me among the people lost forever, 
Justice the founder of my fabric moved ; 
To rear me was the task of power divine, 
Supremest wisdom, and primeval Love. 
Before me, things create were none, save things 
Eternal, and eternal I endure. 
All hope abandon, ye who enter here 1" 

And indeed all hope they must abandon, whose 
character of evil brings them into such a world. 
There the tares will grow on, everlastingly, forever 
burning, yet forever unconsumed. For wickedness 
burneth as the fire, and there is no stay to the on- 
ward progress of character, in a world of results and 
consequences. "What it could have been, if it would 
have changed, what it might have been, had there 
been the disposition, the repenting will, under a 



202 THE WORK OF THE ANGEL REAPERS. 

system infinitely favorable for a return to holiness, 
has been offered, but not accepted ; what it is, and 
must be forever, is all that remains. There can be 
nothing else. God gave the opportunity of what 
man might be, and the trial of what he would do, un- 
der the offer, nay, the urgency of pardon, regenera- 
tion, and eternal life through Christ ; and now there 
only remains what man must be, and what God 
must do, man having passed, as a guilty being, 
through such an ordeal of the divine mercy, un- 
changed. And here we perceive that the object of 
the reapers work, the end of the commission to the 
angels, in binding the bundles of the tares, in sever- 
ing the wicked from among the just, in gathering 
out of God's kingdom all things that offend and 
them that do iniquity, is just this, to burn them. 
11 Let both grow together until the harvest, and in 
the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, gather 
ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles 
to burn them. The Son of man shall send forth his 
angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all 
things that offend, and them that do iniquity, and 
shall cast them into a furnace of fire ; there shall be 
weeping and gnashing of teeth." This is what God 
will do with the wicked. As to what, according to 
our ideas, he might do, ought to do, must do, we 
may reason, imagine, surmise, wonder ; but as to all 
positive declaration of what he certainly will do, we 
are shut up, absolutely, to God's word. As to the 
inevitable consequences of sin, we not only may, 
but must, reason, and with the utmost certainty, out 
of God's word, as well as in it, knowing in ourselves 



THE WOEK OF THE ANGEL EEAPEKS. 203 

that the wages of sin is death, and having also the 
light of God's judgments to guide us. But as to 
God's direct agency, as to his own execution of the 
penalty of his law, we must go solemnly, submissive- 
ly, tremblingly, to God's word. 

And here we are before it. And from the book 
of Genesis to that of Eevelations we find this fur- 
nace of fire ; find the wicked, according to that ex- 
pression in Jude, suffering the vengeance of eternal 
fire. The last great prophet of the Old Testament 
closes his revelation with the announcement of this 
fire. " For behold the day cometh that shall burn as 
an oven, and all the proud, yea, and all that do 
wickedly, shall be stubble ; and the day that cometh 
shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it 
shall leave them neither root nor branch." And the 
first great prophet of the New Testament opens his 
announcement of the gospel with the same fire. 
"Every tree, which bringeth not forth good fruit, is 
hewn down, and cast into the fire. He will gather 
his wheat into the garner, but he will burn up the 
chaff with unquenchable fire." And this same line 
and demonstration of fire is continued in our blessed 
Lord's discourses and parables with unparalleled 
vividness and power ; so that sometimes, as in Mark, 
the sermon is one tissue of flame, and he repeats the 
warning of fire no less than seven different times, in 
as many verses, mentioning three times the fire of 
hell, and five times repeating the assurance that it 
never shall be quenched. And once he carries us 
into the eternal world, and sets us down in hell, 
with the rich man tormented in its flames, and tells 



204 THE WORK OF THE ANGEL KEAPEKS. 

us of the great immutable, impassable gulf between 
that and heaven. And in his very last sermon upon 
earth he leaves the wicked burning in that fire. 
His last words before the crucifixion, to a world of 
reckless sinners, open wide the doors both of heaven 
and of hell, and set before us the equally immutable 
awards of either. " These shall go away into everlast- 
ing punishment, but the righteous into life eternal." 

Now, this is God's arrangement, God's work ; this 
is what God will do with the tares, with the wicked ; 
and the result in their case can be nothing but weep- 
ing and gnashing of teeth; the consciousness of 
guilt, the sufferance of deserved punishment, and 
the remorse of conscience, as the worm that never 
dieth, in the darkness of eternal despair. And with 
all this there will be the clearest sight and the deep- 
est conviction of God's perfect righteousness and 
justice ; nay more, of God's infinite love ; a love 
abused, wasted, rejected on the part of the careless, 
obstinate soul, when God at the expense of the 
death of his son was interposing to save it from de- 
struction, and it would not be saved ; and a love 
now at length exercised for the guardianship of the 
universe, in eternal punishment demanded, made 
necessary, and absolutely drawn down upon the 
sinner by himself, in opposition to all God's efforts 
to the contrary. 

The ordeal of Divine mercy through which the 
sinner thus forces his way to ruin, was a trial and a 
conflict on the part of God for man's life, man's sal- 
vation ; it was a struggle on the part of man for his 
own perdition. Every way was tried, is tried, to 



THE WORK OF THE ANGEL REAPERS. 205 

induce men to flee from the wrath to come ; but, in 
multitudes of cases, in vain. " How often would I 
have gathered your children, but ye would not !" In 
following out even the brief and simple course of 
this parable, into what an array of the Divine power, 
wisdom, and love for man's salvation, has the argu- 
ment led us ! What openings have we seen, through 
which heaven's light radiates on the earth as in a 
flood of demonstrations of Divine truth, in language 
not of words only, but of the mighty realities of the 
cross, and of Grod manifest in the flesh, and of the 
dying anguish of a Divine Sufferer, dying for man's 
sins; dying to demonstrate Grod's justice, that it 
might be possible, through such demonstration of it, 
for believing man to escape the realization and the 
sufferance of it; dying, in the exercise of God's 
compassion, that the guilty and the lost might live ; 
and dying to show that if they do not live, if they 
will not live, through the merits of that death, they 
must die forever ; dying to show at once the infinite 
depths of human guilt and ruin, and the infinite 
depths of Divine holiness and love ; dying to demon- 
strate the meaning and eternity of both worlds, 
hell and heaven 1 

What openings of blazing light upon human 
character have we seen, our character, rendering its 
depravity and ruin, unless changed here, unmistak- 
able, inveterate, irremediable ! What movements 
of Divine providence have we seen, awakening, pur- 
suing, enlightening, teaching ; causing, as it were, 
the very fire from the eternal burnings to fly in men's 
faces, and to light upon their souls ! What is there 



206 THE WORK OF THE ANGEL REAPERS. 

indeed, careless, sinful, dying men ! that God could 
do to awaken you, that He is not doing, has not done ? 
You have been both entreated and alarmed, discip- 
lined with trials and blessings, experiences of con- 
viction, and promises of pardon ; you have been 
pleased and disappointed, treated with indulgence 
and tenderness, and again brought into calamity; 
but in the day of your adversity, God has to com- 
plain of you, that you turn not to the hand of him 
that smiteth you ; and in the day of your prosperity, 
your heart remains unchanged, hardened, and secure 
in sin. What now remains, after all this trial of the 
Divine mercy and love unavailing, but wrath against 
the day of wrath, and revelation of God's righteous 
judgment? What can be done? If mercy has 
been tried in vain, justice must follow. Under the 
Cross of Christ, God gives to sinful men the choice 
of just what attributes they will please to have dis- 
played in themselves. He lets them experience all 
that they choose to experience of the Divine char- 
acter, the Divine perfections. But in their guilt per- 
sisted in, all that they can experience, finally and 
eternally, is the Divine righteousness and justice ; and 
therefore God points us to the Saviour, and Christ 
himself pleads with us, beseeches us, by His dying 
love and agony, that we would be reconciled to God ! 



It is a magnificent conception which is conveyed 
in this language, yet rarely do men pause and pon- 
der before it. The Power of an Endless Life ! 
Life worthy to be called life ; life holy, beatific, 
glorious, divine ; life, participant of God's own holi- 
ness and blessedness ; life, in comparison with which 
all that we have known of existence in this world is 
but as a sleep and a forgetting, or as a dismal dream, 
or as a terrible reality, the death of trespasses and 
sins. The power of such a life ! endless, unchange- 
able, save only from accumulating glory ; perpetual 
in its energy and freshness, with the boundlessness 
and security of infinitude before it, forever and ever ! 

It is this glory which is held out for our attain- 
ment. We, who are here in death, even the death 
of trespasses and sins, are invited to such a life. 
We know not, as yet, either death or life, absolute- 
ly, nor the power of either as eternal, but only in 
the embryo, or by an effort of imagination, in idea 
and not in reality. Soon we shall know, forever ; 
shall know by experience what life is and what 
death is ; what life is by possession of it, and what 
death is, by redemption from it ; or what death is, 



208 THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 

by entering upon it, and what life is by the eternal 
loss of it. 

It is to secure for us the redemption from such 
death, and the glory of such a life, that Christ 
came. He would not have come, had not both 
these inevitable consequences been eternal. He 
was made, not after the law of a carnal or tempo- 
rary commandment, or necessity, or arrangement, 
but after the power of an endless life. He came as 
a Saviour, and came such a Saviour, with just that 
endless life in view, and just that salvation from an 
endless death ; and he would not have come, other- 
wise. He was made, was constituted, not for any 
temporary purpose, plan, or ordinance, but in ac- 
cordance with the necessity of an eternal salvation, 
an eternal life, for its accomplishment, after its 
power. Had it been a finite glory to be gained, or 
a finite misery avoided, a limited life on the one 
side, or a limited death on the other, a transitory 
heaven and a transitory hell, then a transitory High 
Priest and a finite Saviour might have answered. 
There had been no need for the Divine Word to be 
made flesh, nor any sufferance of such a sacrifice. 
But the penalties and powers concerned, the life 
and death, the guilt and the redemption, being 
boundless as eternity, and the government to be 
honored and sustained, the government of God, a 
Saviour must come in the glory and majesty of in- 
finitude, possessing and answering to, the power of 
an endless life. 

Such we take to be the argument in this grand 
and glorious passage, in Hebrews 7: 16. The 



THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 209 

power of an endless life, and the might of a redemp- 
tion into it, by the quickening and resurrection of 
the soul from the death of trespasses and sins, re- 
quired and demanded such a Saviour, and for God's 
glory, justified such a sacrifice. A Saviour must be 
had, the benefit and power of whose atoning inter- 
position would extend through eternity, would se- 
cure the universe through eternity from the incur- 
sions and the malignity of sin, would destroy him 
that had the power of death, would take away all 
guilt forever from the soul, and would confirm all 
redeemed and believing creatures in holiness and 
happiness, in God's love and under God's law, for- 
ever. Let us then look at some of the things in- 
cluded under this vast and mighty expression, The 
Power of an Endless Life. 

And first, it is a perfect life. They who enter 
upon it are without fault before the throne of God. 
There is no sin, no defilement, no imperfection, no 
spot, nor wrinkle, nor any such thing, nor remnant, 
nor result, nor fear, of evil. There is not only no 
imperfection, but on the contrary, a purity and per- 
fection so infinite, that it is just a participation of 
God's own holiness, a transformation and transfisr- 
uration into the righteousness of the Lord of life 
and glory. The glory and the bliss of such perfect, 
absolute, unspotted holiness, are beyond the possi- 
bility of our conception in this mortal state ; and 
therefore the inspired Apostle himself is compelled 
to say that it doth not yet appear what we shall be, 
only this we know, that we shall be like Christ. 
And this perfection in his likeness will be of body 



210 THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 

as well as spirit, because lie will change even our 
vile body, that it may be fashioned according to his 
glorious body ; and the very example of his own 
resurrection is the pattern of God's mighty power 
towards those who believe, according to the work- 
ing of that amazing power which he wrought in 
Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set 
him at his own right hand in the heavenly places. 
This is Christ's own glory, Christ's own life, and we 
are complete in him, possessing and reflecting his 
glory. We cannot, in our mortal state, have any 
adequate idea of the infinite glory and blissfulness 
even of a perfect freedom from sin ; but as to the 
positive glory of appearing in Christ's likeness, 
neither the heart nor imagination of man ever yet 
began the most distant conception of it, except as 
God deigns an otherwise incommunicable revela- 
tion, by his spirit. In Christ the perfection of 
Saints is an infinite perfection, and in him they 
enter on the power of an endless life in perfect one- 
ness in spirit and in work with the infinitely glo- 
rious Jehovah, even as the Son of God, in his spirit 
and work, was one with the Father. 

In the second place, it is a social life, in which all 
the communicative and companionable tendencies of 
our nature and powers of our being, will be exer- 
cised in an enjoyment ten thousand fold intensified 
by being reflected from, and shared with, the 
beatific experience of others. It is remarkable, as 
an indication of the glory of the social life of 
heaven, and the activity and blissfulness of mutual 
thought and affection interchanged and ardent there, 



THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 211 

that this same epistle to the Hebrews introduces us 
to the innumerable company of angels, and the 
general assembly and church of the first born whose 
names are written in heaven, and to the spirits of 
the just made perfect. We are come to such vast 
and glorious assemblages, as to scenes and objects 
transporting, even to be only looked at and ad- 
mired, but how much more enrapturing to go in and 
out among them, holding communion with them. 
The very sight of others in glory will be infinite 
joy, a study of salvation, a rapture of delight. There 
will be so much to admire and love in every 
creature, every creature will be so full of glory, so 
ravishing a reflection of the glory of the Saviour, 
that eternity might be occupied in silently gazing, and 
adoring ; and even so the Lord Jesus at his coming 
with His saints will be admired in all who believe. 
But there will be infinite sociableness in heaven ; 
that life will be the perfection of a social life, as 
truly as it will be a life filled with all the fulness of 
God. There will be the good and the glorious of 
all ages and all worlds to love and to rejoice with. 
There will be communion among angels and saints, 
sweeter than the conversation on the way to Em- 
maus, more frank and loving than ever could have 
been imagined, in ten thousand infinite directions 
and disclosures of mutual history and character, in 
the suggestion, investigation, and comparison of 
thought, amidst the providence, works, attributes 
and revelations of the infinite God. And indeed the 
power of an endless life would find full employment 
in the universe of God alone, and saints will find a 



212 THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 

boundless study of the Divine glory in angels, 
principalities and powers, even as to principalities 
and powers shall be revealed in the church the 
manifold wisdom of God. There will be mutual 
study, there will be social study, there will be 
nothing solitary in heaven, nothing exclusive or 
concealed, nor any need of guardian forms of courte- 
sies, nor any distant or reserved civilities, nor any 
jealousy of honors claimed or due, nor any sense 
either of superiority or inferiority, all pride and 
envy being forever debarred from the possibility of 
entrance or existence there. Divine love is the at- 
mosphere of heaven ; they dwell in love, they dwell 
in God, for God is love, and in sweet forgetfulness 
of self, the happiness of others is as dear and de- 
lightful to each as their own. 

But in the third place, it is a life of blissful 
activity. There will be employment enough in 
heaven, and they need no rest, day nor night, nor 
ever experience any exhaustion of their energies. 
All is harmonious activity, nothing conflicting, en- 
tangled, opposing, or out of joint. All the powers 
of the being are in concert, inspired with one mind 
and one spirit in the service and the praise of God. 
Every intellectual capacity will be carried to the 
highest possible exercise, in studying the divine at- 
tributes, and accomplishing the Divine will. The 
individual will, being in every respect one with 
God's, and the whole soul filled with His love, the 
activity of heaven in doing His will must be sponta- 
neous and infinitely delightful, perpetual and un- 
changeable. And in whatever universe of God, or 



THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 213 

part of His universe, an intelligent being might be 
employed, there is everywhere a sense of God, a 
perception of His presence, such as in our mortal 
body we cannot have, but with which and in which 
there is, to the soul that loves God, the fulness of 
heaven's blessedness. God's will is the happiness of 
such a soul, and activity in doing it would be the 
irrepressible expression of such happiness. Would 
that it were so on earth ; our meat and drink to do 
the will of our Father in heaven ! 

In the fourth place, it is a progressive life. And 
here it is that this phrase, the power of an endless life, 
•comes into more immediate and definite exposition, 
at least the significance of it is more palpable. An 
endless life ! the power of an endless life ! The very 
idea of it is triumphant. The idea of the life of 
an antediluvian, a life of only a thousand years, is 
grand and imposing. Only a thousand years! 
What might not be accomplished in such a tract of 
time on earth, with energies unfettered and untired, 
a heart filled with God's love, and all the powers of 
the whole being employed «,nd absorbed with inex- 
haustible spontaneous delight and zeal in His service ! 
What progression, what acceleration would there be, 
and what accumulation of impulse and power from 
generation to generation! But a thousand years 
are as one day in the conception and incomputable 
arithmetic of an endless life. Our plans on earth 
are contracted, fragmentary, broken, and incomplete ; 
but in the security and infinitude of an endless life 
there may be plans, even by finite minds, encom- 
passing ages and worlds. And there will be nothing 



214 THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 

to prevent the execution of them, no fear of inter- 
ruption by death, no doubt or indecision of mind, 
no inward conflict nor external foes, no enfeebling 
of the energies by sickness or unwillingness, nor 
distracting of them by temptation, nor crippling of 
them by want of means, nor any dividing of them, 
as in this world, between present and future, temporal 
and eternal, earthly and divine. There will be an 
infinitude of wealth in God's bounty to draw from, 
for all things are yours, children of this glorious 
adoption in Christ ! whether things present or 
things to come ; and ye are heirs of Grod, and joint 
heirs with Christ, and he that overcometh shall 
inherit all things. All fountains of strength and 
grace shall be yours to draw from, and with angelic 
skill and wisdom all needed resources will be com- 
bined, and with intuitive swiftness the best means 
will be seen and adopted. The understanding will 
be divinely illuminated, the mental vision seeing no 
more as through a glass darkly, but face to face, and 
the memory no longer treacherous and feeble, but 
capacious and retentive* beyond all bounds. All 
past acquisitions will be secured, and nothing lost 
or wasted. There will be no haste, nor anxiety, but 
a divine and holy leisure and serenity of mind, even 
in the swiftest, grandest onward excitement and 
progress. It is only in the power and triumph of 
an endless life, that any creature from this restless 
world ever can be at leisure. But there you have 
eternity at your disposal, and all your plans, glo- 
rious and unembarrassed, may move on forever and 
ever ! It is the power of an endless life. 



THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 215 

There will be progression in holiness. There can 
indeed be no addition made to the righteousness 
of Christ, and that is what the believer is clothed 
with from the outset, and that is what every redeemed 
soul will reflect in glory everlasting. But as star 
differeth from star in glory, so in the reflection of 
that glory, which will be brighter and brighter the 
more the soul studies and knows of God and his 
holiness. The glory, the brightness, the worth of 
that holiness will continually be increasing in the 
creature, because it is infinite in the Creator, and 
the soul will forever be coming into nearer and 
nearer resemblance to God in Christ. 

There will be progression in the power of holy 
habit. Think of the glory and the power of such 
habit in the soul, when ages on ages have made the 
life of love a nature so irrevocable, that by the very 
principles of an immortal constitution there shall be 
no more possibility of change, than in the nature of 
the Son of God ! How glorious is this certainty ! 
This is one element in the power of an endless life. 
It shall be a power of life that all the opposing 
powers in the universe might be let loose upon with 
safety ; might war against it, and should not over- 
come, might labor with whatever native or permit- 
ted intensity and energy could be brought into the 
conflict, and yet should not start one impulse in the 
soul, or one thought or motive from its foundation 
in holiness, and its con firmed immutable fastening 
to the throne and being of God, and its direction in 
his love and glory ! This is that great meaning, 
beginning in this life, and running on through 



216 THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 

eternity, of that triumphant close of the eighth of 
Komans, revealing the immutability of that holy love, 
which nothing can overcome or weaken. "Nay, 
in all these things we are more than conquerors, 
through him that loved us. For I am persuaded 
that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor princi- 
palities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things 
to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other crea- 
ture, shall be able to separate us from the love of 
God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." 

There will also be progression in knowledge, 
there will be boundless room for this, throughout 
eternity, and in this particular, easier than in any 
other, the overwhelming weight of meaning in the 
text may be approximated, and the power of an 
endless life imagined. There is always an infinitude 
still before the mind, as fresh, as inexhausted, and 
as inexhaustible, as if just now you were stepping 
on the verge of it, just now in the first moment of 
your acquaintance with it. The incomprehensible 
infinitude of God is before you, and what you do 
know, though it may, after the lapse of countless 
ages, seem as an absolute infinitude already con- 
quered, is yet as nothing in comparison with what 
you do not know. Oh the incomprehensibility, and 
the eternity, and the infinitude of God ! Who 
by searching can find out God, who can find out 
the Almighty unto perfection? Yea, unsearch- 
able are his judgments, and his ways past finding 
out ; so that the whole capacity of the soul will 
be filled, both as to intelligence and happiness, 
and will be employed to the uttermost, forever and 



» 
THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 217 

ever, and yet no possible approximation be made to 
a limit, in the knowledge of God, in the study of 
his works and ways, in his kingdoms of creation, 
grace, and glory. All that is comprehended in the 
threefold division in that great promise of Christ in 
the Apocalypse, shall be given, as an infinite posses- 
sion for the wanderings, and acquisitions, and visions 
of the soul. " Him that overcometh will I make a 
pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no 
more out. And I will write upon him the name of 
my God, and the name of the city of my God, new 
Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from 
my God, and I will write upon him my new name." 
" Since the beginning of the world men have not 
heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the 
eye seen, God, besides thee, what He hath pre- 
pared for him that waiteth for Him." 

And even the revelation by the Spirit is more 
the implantation or excitement in the soul of a 
longing, panting desire after God and his glory, 
than any actual sight or knowledge. We want the 
fire of inspiration, the winged fiery chariot of in- 
spiration, to go careering on this vast immensity, 
this illimitable, unimaginable, incommunicable do- 
minion of the divine attributes ; and if we could 
give the widest scope and license to the grandest 
imagination ever created, as to the possibilities of 
glory to be encountered, we should fall infinitely 
below them. In the matter of merely material 
worlds, the career of journeying and investigation 
from one to another, the contemplation and the 
noting down, from universe to universe, of marvels, 

10 



218 THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 

which it might take a thousand thousand ages of 
the swiftest possible motion to reach, and a thou- 
sand more to master and comprehend, present a 
sphere of mental activity and acquisition, boundless 
and eternal. What heart can conceive, what mind 
can measure, even in imagination, the infinitude of 
the riches of creative wisdom and love ! But when 
you add to that the riches of God's grace, and su- 
peradd to that the riches of his glory, the kingdoms 
of creation, redemption and reward, piled one above 
another, in every direction an absolutely incompre- 
hensible infinitude, you are confounded by the very 
attempt, and can only humbly cry out with the en- 
raptured and yet baffled apostle, Oh the depths ! the 
infinite depths ! infinite on infinite ! 

And in view of such glimpses of God's glory, the 
heart that has been taught by His Spirit, the heart 
that has begun to know, in feeling and experience, 
the power of His love, is ready to exclaim, My God ! 
it is enough ! Thou art my all in all. Whom have 
I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon the 
earth that I desire beside Thee. Oh ! if I may but 
be made to know God, if I may but be taught to 
love Him, I want nothing else. My happiness is 
secure in Him. The power of an endless life is 
power to me, because it will let me study and love 
God to all eternity. The power of an endless life is 
glory to me, because it absorbs me in the glory of 
God, unfathomable, unsearchable, inconceivable, 
adorable, eternal. This is life eternal, this is the 
power of an endless life, to know Thee, the only 
true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent. 



THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 219 

And thus, again, that life is eternally progressive 
in enjoyment, in delight, in happiness inconceivable, 
unutterable. Forever increasing with the increase 
of the knowledge of God in Christ, ages on ages 
shall witness an undiminished freshness and novelty 
in the glory still to be revealed, a capacity of bliss 
forever enlarging, and a reality of bliss forever 
accumulating. The bliss arising from the knowledge 
and the love of God not only never can have any 
limit, but, in the nature of things, must be positively 
and infinitely progressive. "What raptures are pro- 
duced, even now, even in this world, even in the 
midst of suffering and torture, by the manifestation 
of God to the soul ! Take the case of such a man 
as the dying Payson, and see him racked with pain, 
yet swimming in a sea of glory ; almost torn asunder 
with the spasms of bodily anguish, yet, in his inward 
spirit, visited not only of angels, but of God ; almost 
entranced in the light and glory of God in Christ 
Jesus, and, under the communications of God to the 
soul, rilled with serene, ineffable, ecstatic rapture and 
delight ! Take the case of Dr. Scott, whose experi- 
ence of dying was in these words: " This is heaven 
begun. I have done with darkness forever, forever. 
Satan is vanquished. Nothing now remains but 
salvation, with eternal glory — eternal glory." This 
is of God — the presence, the power, the glory. It 
is a power and a mystery of bliss beyond the reach 
of mortal natural philosophy. Let reason, and na- 
turalism, and rationalism, do the utmost with their 
forces — let them call in all the powers of science, 
art, nature, imagination, and they can produce no- 



220 THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 

tiling like this, nothing of this; neither can they 
account for this. It is God's own mystery, God's 
own glory, God's own gift, God's sole almighty 
power. Here are glimpses of what God can do, 
what the manifestations of God to the soul can do, 
even this side the grave, in a world of guilt and 
suffering. Who, then, can reach to any adequate 
conception of what God may do, what He has pro- 
mised He will do, in a world where He himself 
dwelleth, in light inaccessible and full of glory? 
Who shall set any limits to the happiness of the 
soul in Him, in a world triumphant over all evil, 
where there is no more sin, doubt, darkness, unbe- 
lief, pain or suffering, but pure, clear, celestial, 
radiant light, within and without, — the region of 
the Paradise of God to dwell in, and the peace of 
God, which passeth all understanding, filling the 
soul and expanding it, as the air lifts up these heav- 
ens ? the power of an endless life I the power 
of an endless life ! in the manifestation and dis- 
covery of God to the soul ! 



CH 



aug pattstflits* 



In His last loving address to the dear disciples, 
so sad, yet so consoling, our blessed Lord said, " In 
my Father's House are many mansions: if not, I 
would have told you. I go to prepare a place for 
you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I 
will come again, and receive you unto myself ; that 
where I am, there ye may be also." 

My Father's House ! How sweet a designation 
of locality as well as personal affection ! My 
Father's House ! And is not this vast universe the 
House of my Father, and where He is, there the 
very homestead of heaven, no matter where, if He 
be there ? Oh yes ! But that is not the thought 
that Jesus here suggests or intimates, nor that the 
form of truth that here He teaches to the faith of 
His disciples, for their joy and consolation. There 
is delightful deflniteness here. It is not the dim in- 
comprehensible universality of Omnipresence mere- 
ly, but a place for our abode, as determinate as 
place is for us now, and with as intimate a home 
relation, as the dearest fireside on this earth can 
have, nay incomparably more intimate and personal 
and definitely local, in our Father's House in heaven. 



222 MANY MANSIONS. 

It is that building of God, that house not made 
with hands, eternal in the heavens, to which the 
thoughts are here carried. We know that if our 
earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we 
have that building of God ; and this text of Paul 
in Corinthians may well be taken as a kind of 
paraphrase or guide to this, in John, for the inter- 
pretation of the expression, In my Father's House 
are many mansions. Thus, then, let us examine some 
of the glorious characteristics of that heavenly 
building, which is there our home. 

In the first place, it is a building of God. God 
made it, with neither creature, nor created agency, 
intervening. It is God's own, immediate work. It 
is His work, as a different kind of work, and in a 
very different sense, from anything material. It is 
a building not merely of God, but as the expression 
may allow, a building proceeding forth from God, 
rather as an effluence from His own essence, than 
an ordinary exercise or result of creative power. It 
is said that God is light, also that God dwelleth in 
light, also that we ourselves, as the children of God, 
dwell in God ; we are also called children of light. 
Now, if we knew the immateriality of light, we 
might find in that something more than a mere type 
of our Father's House in heaven. This building of 
God may be as different from all material construc- 
tions or creations, of which we have either knowl- 
edge or conception, as the light itself is different 
from the forms of material substance, which we see 
around us. 

For, in the second place, it is a house not made 



MANY MANSIONS. 228 

with hands, not capable of being so made. It is not 
constructed piece by piece, as all buildings here in 
this world are, but is one and indivisible, as if an orb 
in the heavens were constructed of one perfect 
diamond. Moreover, it is possessed and inspired 
with the attributes of a spiritual glory, so that we 
could get no more idea of it, nor of any likelihood 
of it, from anything of material growth or construc- 
tion, than we could get an idea of the nature or ap- 
pearance of this all-surrounding crystal atmosphere 
of heaven, from considering the doors of our 
houses, or the iron hinges on which they swing. 
All possible forms of architecture here are made 
with hands. The temple of Grod, built by Solomon, 
was so prepared, that there was neither hammer nor 
axe, nor any tool of iron heard in the house while 
it was in building ; yet was it all built with hands, 
and its glory was to pass away and be forgotten for- 
ever. "We can build out of Grod's material creation, 
structures of great beauty and grandeur ; and we 
can imitate the very forms of nature, almost at our 
pleasure, using the materials placed of Grod at our 
disposal. Almost anything and everything in this 
lovely breathing world, the hand of man can imi- 
tate, with exquisite naturalness and skill ; trees, 
plants, roses, feathers, flowers, birds ; all the crea- 
tions that the sun evolves or shines upon. The 
first Crystal Palace was a house made with hands. 
But its very idea sprung from the effort of a garden- 
er to construct a large and peculiarly shaped glass 
covering for a strange, costly and wondrously 
beautiful lily from a foreign land. So with material 



224 MANY MANSIONS. 

substances, the architect wants but the idea, and the 
skill even of human hands can produce structures 
of vast magnificence and splendor. But life and 
light cannot be handled, cannot be put together, 
cannot be imitated, nor anything like them be made 
with hands, nor any approximation to them, nor 
any symbol, or forth-shadowing resemblance of a 
spiritual habitation. So this building of God, not 
made with hands, is thus presented as inconceivably 
superior in essence and in glory to anything sug- 
gested by our mortal frame, or the frame of this 
material universe. 

It is also, in the third place, an eternal building. 
In this respect, again, it is different from anything 
in this world, anything in the visible universe. 
Everything that these eyes behold is transitory ; not 
one thing that we are acquainted with is permanent. 
These spheres and orbs of glory, constructed with 
such infinite skill and grandeur, connected and 
revolving, and each in its own bosom creatively 
germinating, by laws of such infinite complication 
and harmony, by principles of such Divine wisdom 
and benevolence, are yet to be laid aside. This 
earth and these heavens are to be rolled together as 
a scroll, though so Divinely glorious ; these elements 
shall melt with fervent heat, and all nature be dis- 
solved in the chaos of a final conflagration. " Of 
old hast Thou laid the foundations of the earth, and 
the heavens are the work of Thy hands. They shall 
perish, but Thou endurest. As a vesture shaft Thou 
fold them up, and they shall be changed ; but Thou 
art the same, from everlasting to everlasting !" And 



MANY MANSIONS. 225 

so is this building of God, not made with hands, 
immutable, imperishable, like His own eternity, the 
same forever and ever, indestructible, everlasting. 

But, in the fourth place, it is eternal in the heav- 
ens. It is where God resides, in light inaccessible 
and full of glory; it is where God manifests the 
brightness of His attributes, in a display peculiar 
and endearing, intimate and local. My Father's 
house signified, even to the Saviour, a divine, be- 
loved and heavenly abode, from which, for a season, 
He had departed, had laid aside His glory, had left 
His robes of Deity, as it were, lying there, thrown 
off upon the throne of God, till He should return to 
be reinvested with them, after having accomplished, 
by His sufferings and death, in human form, that 
infinite redemption which for guilty, dying sinners 
He had undertaken. My Father's house signified, 
even to Him, His home in the heavens. Did He 
not say so on earth? "I came forth from the 
Father, and am come into the world. Again I 
leave the world, and go to the Father." And again : 
" Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my 
Father ; but go to my brethren, and say unto them, 
I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my 
God and your God." 
# It is peculiarly the dwelling-place of God. That 
city of which we read in the Eevelation of John — 
that holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from 
God out of heaven, and called the tabernacle of God 
with men, having the glory of God, presents the 
most distinct and definite image under which it has 
pleased the Divine Spirit to shadow forth the place 

10* 



226 MANY MANSIONS. 

and nature of our house which is from heaven, 
my Father's house, in which are many mansions. 
The throne of God and of the Lamb is there ; and 
His servants see His face, with His name in their 
foreheads. There is no temple there, for the Lord 
God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. 
There is no need of the sun, nor of the moon there, 
for the glory of God doth lighten it, and the Lamb 
is the light thereof. And whereas, it is said of 
those who are before the throne of God in such 
glory, that they see His face, and then it is added, 
that His name is in their foreheads, this is to signify 
the completion of all those predictions and processes 
of grace unto glory, begun on earth and fulfilled in 
heaven ; begun in beholding, by faith, as in a glass, 
even in this earthly tabernacle, the glory of the 
Lord, and being changed into the same image from 
glory to glory ; begun here on earth, by having the 
life hid with Christ in God, to come forth there in 
heaven in the life revealed, seen and known, with 
Christ in God forever, according to the promise, 
" When He who is your life shall appear, then shall 
ye also appear with Him in glory ;" begun by the 
burial and hiding of the life with Him and in Him 
here, and completed by and because of the sight of 
His face there, according to the promise and assur- 
ance, " "We know that when He shall appear, we 
shall be like Him, for we shall see Hini as He is." 

The sight of Him as He is, in His Father's house 
in glory, will complete the fulness of perfection and 
of glory in His dear disciples, as they are in Him, in 
their many mansions in that house, in His eternal 



MANY MANSIONS. 227 

likeness. The sight of His face, without veil, with- 
out cloud, in the eternal glory, will bring out the 
fulness of His name in their foreheads — that is, in 
their whole conspicuous body, form, spirit and nature, 
— His whole name, the glory of His Divine attri- 
butes, His whole image, a perfect reflection of His 
holiness in their holiness in Christ, eternal in the 
heavens ; the glory of (rod, and the glory of Jesus, 
and the glory of the city, all possessed and reflected 
in that name, in their foreheads, and flashing forth, 
when they see His face, even as the glory of the 
noonday sun would be flashed forth from a spotless 
mirror, with insufferable brightness, the moment 
you should turn the mirror to the sun. For the 
Lord of glory and of life hath said of him that over- 
cometh, and is to see God, " I will write upon him 
the name of my God, and the name of the city of 
my God, and my new name" ; and when they see His 
face, then will the whole eternal glory of that name 
shine forth in their whole being. They may be 
under a cloud now, as a pure and spotless mirror 
might be rolled up and covered round and hidden 
in a veil of dark cloth, so that even beneath the sun, 
you could not see that it is a mirror, could not see 
the sun in it ; but the instant you unroll the cloth, 
take away the veil, and hold it up to the sun, then 
it is so flashing and glorious, that you cannot look 
at it. Just so, when these wrappings of cloth, these 
folds of earth, that veil the dwelling of the soul in 
this earthly tabernacle, are drawn away ; when this 
tent is taken down, and the believing soul, without 
fault, without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, is 



228 MANY MANSIONS. 

before the throne of God, and sees Jesus as He is, 
then will the soul itself be seen shining forth in 
Jesus' likeness, glorious in His glory. 

But now, in the fifth place, there are many man- 
sions. There is room for all, and all who are there 
belong there, and the house belongs to them, for 
they are heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ. 
As being the sons of God, the dwellers in those man- 
sions have received the building as their inheritance 
in Christ. For them he has fitted it up, and placed it 
at their disposal. " I go to prepare a place for you." 
They have their mansions in fee simple. They are 
no more tenants, but heirs, joint heirs with Christ, 
who, as a Son, with them as sons, abideth in the 
House forever. There is no incumbrance on the 
property, and never can be. There is no mortgage 
on our Father's house in Heaven, whatever there 
may sometimes be, even on his own house on 
earth, which there never should be. There is no 
debt upon it, nor ever was, nor ever can be ; for 
the debts of the children in it, to whom it is freely 
given of God, were all paid by their suffering, dying 
Kedeemer, and to them it is given, free, full, the 
title in Christ unquestioned, unincumbered, per- 
petual. So ought the house of God on earth to be 
in this respect some faint type of the freedom and 
glory of that house in Heaven. It ought to belong 
to God, and to be held by man simply in trust for 
him. And indeed, since he hath provided for us a 
habitation so glorious, his own free gift, with a per- 
petual title of heirship to it in Christ Jesus, it is but 
little that we can do for him, if, out of our abun- 



MANY MANSIONS. 229 

dance which he hath given us by the way, we put 
his house on earth into his hands unincumbered, 
for the glory of his kingdom, that it may be said in 
Zion, of this and that man, when he writeth up 
the people, These were born there. Oh truly we 
ought not to be willing to have God's house on 
earth in debt, where we are training for that house 
in glory, which he hath already put out of debt at 
our disposal. 

Now, once more in our consideration of the build- 
ing of God, if there are many mansions in our Fa- 
ther's house, and divinely glorious, there are to be 
glorious inhabitants also (as indeed we have already 
anticipated), and a great multitude of them, whom 
no man can number. " Ye are come," says Paul, " to 
an innumerable company of angels, to the general 
assembly and church of the first born, which are 
written in heaven, and to the spirits of the just 
made perfect." There will be the good and the 
blessed, from all ages and nations, the crowned and 
the glorified, all, whose robes have been washed 
and made white in the blood of the Lamb. There 
will be Paul and Peter and John, and all the be- 
loved apostles and disciples, who walked with 
Christ on earth, and shared his personal sufferings. 
And there will be all those whom they were instru- 
mental in bringing to glory. There will be the 
Ephesian, Philippian, Corinthian and Athenian con- 
verts. Joseph of Arimathea, and Mcodemus, and 
Dionysius the Areopagite, and Lydia the seller of 
purple, and Barnabas and Timotheus and Apollos, 
and multitudes of others from the Apostolic age, 



230 MANY MANSIONS. 

will be there together. There will be Phillip, and 
his interesting convert the Ethiopian, seen last on 
earth sitting together in the chariot, reading of their 
Saviour's sufferings, now beheld in heaven, gazing 
together on their Saviour's infinite glory. There 
will be Enoch and Abel, and Adam and Noah, and 
hosts of shining witnesses of oldest time. There 
will be Moses and Elias as on the Mount of Trans- 
figuration. There will be Abraham, Isaac, and 
Jacob in the Kingdom of Heaven, with David and 
Job, Isaiah, Daniel, Jeremiah, and all the Prophets, 
and all who with them or through them died in 
faith, having embraced the promises. There will 
be the family of Bethany, and those dear ones who 
followed Christ with their hearts, and ministered to 
him of their substance. There will be that saint 
who washed his feet with her tears, and wiped them 
with the hairs of her head ; and she too, who broke 
for him her box of Alabaster, and stood behind him 
weeping ; and those who followed him to the cross, 
and watched him at the sepulchre. There, too, will 
be that poor widow whom Jesus beheld as she stole 
trembling to Grod's treasury, and threw in all the 
living that she had. Oh what a study of character 
will be there, and what a comparison of infinite re- 
ward of glory 'with little but precious sacrifices and 
services on earth ! There will be the earliest noble 
army of confessors and martyrs. There will be the 
great companies of witnesses slain in the many per- 
secutions of the saints. There will be the glorified 
forms of those Christian heroes, whose bones lie 
bleaching in the mountain snows, and those whose 



MANY MANSIONS. 231 

life wore out in dungeons, or who by racking tor- 
iures rode to heaven in fire. "What a congregation 
of the good from every clime, and every nation ! 
"What spirits of the just made perfect, in assembled 
hosts, of men whose memory is sweet on earth, and 
around any one of whom, if seen again on earth in 
person, men would crowd in homage and admira- 
tion ! Think of meeting them together ! Think of 
being made worthy to meet them ! Think of the 
only condition on which we can meet them, by a 
participation in the life and likeness of one common 
Saviour. 

Dear friend, have you begun your acquaintance 
with Him ? Is the power of his grace already ex- 
perienced within you, and is your life so hid with 
Christ in Grod, that you can feel that he has gone to 
prepare a mansion for you, and that when he ap- 
pears again, you also shall appear with him in glory? 
Happy indeed are you, if by the law of the spirit of 
life in Christ Jesus, setting you free from the law of 
sin and of death, this is your assurance. And ought 
not the possession of this assurance to be your con- 
stant aim and labor ? Ask yourself daily, into what 
house you are going when you die. Do not imitate 
the fool, who spent his probation in pulling down 
his barns and building greater, but never in all his 
life made the least preparation for the dwelling of 
his soul in glory. Alas, there are many who take 
far greater care for a house for their carriages and 
horses, than they do for their own immortal spirits. 
Do not imitate the wretched being, who from his 
palaces, and magnificent furniture, and grand cloth- 



232 MANY MANSIONS. 

ing and living, went into a house of flames. Oh 
see to it that you have this building of God. Give 
all diligence to make your title sure, your calling 
and election. 

And another thing is evident, if you possess that 
building in the skies, your affections will be fixed 
there, you will sometimes long to go there, more 
earnestly than ever the owner of a lovely paradise 
in the country longs to escape from the city to the 
sweet open fields, when Spring and Summer are 
spreading glory and life over all nature. And again, 
if you possess it, you ought to know that you possess 
it, and to act accordingly, and never be much 
troubled by anything that befalls the walls of this 
earthly tenement, or you in it. You ought con- 
stantly to remember that this must be taken down, 
before you can be admitted to that ; but though the 
taking down of this be painful, the being clothed 
upon with that — the hope and assurance of it — 
should make you resigned and happy, and your only 
anxiety should be, to be prepared. 



CJre imlMug d <&&, fur (§ah 

In that passage in the second epistle of Paul to 
the Corinthians, to which we have already referred, 
as a fit commentary on the preceding passage in 
John, concerning our Father's house, and its many 
mansions, Paul says we KNOW that if our earthly 
house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a 
building of God, a house not made with hands, 
eternal in the heavens. 

The language of this expression of Christian con- 
fidence is peculiar in respect both to the intensity 
of the confidence, as an absolute knowledge, and the 
time of the possession described, as the present time. 
We know that we have. Here is the intimation of 
a present experience as the ground of a future cer- 
tainty. The experience in a Christian soul arises 
from what, under the grace of God, that soul has 
been and is now doing, the life, hid with Christ in 
God, which it has been and is living, the character 
it has assumed and is building up. If there be this 
well-grounded assurance of this glorious house, it is 
because, as the apostle continues in his argument, 
he that hath wrought us for this self same thing is 
God, who hath also given unto us the Earnest of his 



234 THE BUILDING OF GOD, FOR GOD. 

Spirit. And the proof that he hath so wrought us, 
is to be found in the fact of our working in that 
same direction, by that same Spirit. Let every man 
take heed how he buildeth. Every man is building 
is now building for eternity. The manner in which 
he is building now, shows what will be the nature 
of his habitation in eternity. The building into 
which he is to remove so shortly, is preparing in 
this world. In many cases it is already decided ; 
it is always so, if a man be truly a child of God ; for 
when a sinner comes to the Saviour, and begins 
building for eternity, God is building with him and 
for him. " Know ye not that ye are the temple 
of the living God, and that the Spirit of God dwell- 
eth in you ? He that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in 
God and God in him. For thus saith the high and 
lofty one that inhabiteth eternity ; I dwell in the 
high and holy place, with him also that is of a con- 
trite and humble spirit. He that keepeth His com- 
mandments dwelleth in Him. And hereby know 
we that we dwell in Him, and that He abideth in us 
by His Spirit that He hath given us." 

This, then, is the rule under which we are all ad- 
vancing to meet God in eternity. By the manner 
of our passing through this world, we determine the 
manner of our residence in the next. It is just 
simply a question of character. They who work 
with God, and build their house as the Spirit of God 
directs, working out their own salvation by Him 
working in them both to will and to do, shall dwell 
with God forever. But if otherwise, if the master 
workman is Death, by sin, and Satan, every man's 



THE BUILDING OF GOD, FOR GOD. 235 

Work shall be made manifest, for the day shall de- 
clare it, because it shall be revealed by fire, and the 
fire shall try every man's work, of what sort it is. 
It all proceeds just according to the rule that what- 
soever a man soweth that shall he also reap. He 
that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap cor- 
ruption, but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the 
Spirit reap life everlasting. 

"We see, then, if a man has so much to do in this 
world with the building of that house, if according 
as he builds here, such and so the building will be 
there, what madness it is to neglect this house, to 
make no provision in regard to it, or to be employed 
in constructing it out of materials that will not stand 
the fire. It must be of such materials that God 
can dwell in it, that we and God can dwell together 
in it. If God cannot dwell in it, then it can be no 
dwelling of happiness to us. For it is written that 
our God is a consuming fire. And when we bring 
such a text as that, alongside with that other from 
the Epistle to the Corinthians, that the fire shall try 
every man's work of what sort it is, it seems that 
we have a new light as to the kind of fire that is to 
try the building. Suppose it to be simply the fire 
of God's holiness, the fire of the presence- of God. 
Can we stand that, if our building is made of such 
materials as cannot endure that light ? It is said of 
all the wicked, that wickedness is in their dwellings ; 
and it is also said, Thou art not a God that hast 
pleasure in wickedness, neither shall evil dwell with 
thee. But it is also said of all the good, The up- 
right shall dwell in God's presence, and God hath 



236 THE BUILDING OF GOD, FOR GOD. 

said, I will dwell in them, and will be with them. 
The very essence of heaven, and the peculiarity of 
the building there, and the blissful certainty and im- 
mutable necessity of glory for the righteous there, 
is this, that they dwell in the very presence of God. 
But he himself is like the refiner's fire, arid in the 
last revelation he will come in flaming fire, and the 
very work of the Holy Spirit in preparing submis- 
sive and believing souls for his presence and glory, 
is said to be that of the Holy Ghost and of fire ; 
and therefore rolls forth the woe of the prophets 
against the men who build by iniquity, and in the 
very same breath we are called to mark that it is 
of the Lord of Hosts that such persons shall labor 
in the very fire. But who among us shall dwell 
with devouring fire, and who can lie down in ever- 
lasting burnings ? 

Now, a man may choose what materials he pleases ; 
he may build for himself just what character he 
pleases ; but let him remember that he is putting up 
a building, which is to meet God's inspection, and 
not only so, but if he has the least idea of eternal 
blessedness, it must be a building in which God can 
dwell. 

Let us then suppose that a man having the com- 
mand of all the elements, and of all the resources 
of science for their combination, and of all the 
agencies and materials for the construction of a 
splendid residence, should undertake to build a 
house out of a preparation of crystalized and solid- 
ified gunpowder, or whatever ingredients of mingled 
sulphurous, bituminous, fiery and explosive power, 



THE BUILDING OF GOD, FOR GOD. 237 

might be concentrated and hardened into beams, 
pillars, walls, roofs and rafters. He might also have 
his house furnished with wrought crystal furni- 
ture of the same material ; brimstone couches, and 
chairs carved of solid nitre, and stuffed and cush- 
ioned with gun-cotton. The house is to be lighted 
with gas, and he has all the fixtures prepared accord- 
ingly, and gas-pipes of transparent asphaltum run- 
ning through every apartment. It is a wondrous 
house indeed ; the dreams of the Arabian Nights' 
Entertainments never imagined such a building ; a 
splendid house, a most original and costly house ; 
and if things were well adapted, if the nature of 
the materials would permit, it might be a most com- 
fortable, useful, and lasting house. But there is one 
thing the builder has forgotten, or by a strange 
hallucination has overlooked, in thus consulting his 
own will, and building his house according to the 
freaks of his fancy ; and that is, the inflammable 
nature of its materials, and the certainty that that 
which is necessary to light it, will also inevitably 
consume it ; that which is requisite for the possi- 
bility of residing in it, will shroud it, from the foun- 
dation to the top-stone, in a sheet of fire. The 
instant the gas is lighted, or the fire kindled, the 
whole building is a flash of living inextinguishable 
flame. 

Now, this is but a faint emblem of a man who 
builds up his character in this world without God, 
out of materials that are instinct with sin, and sealed 
with God's displeasure. His character thus wrought 
out, solidified, established here, is to be his possess- 



238 THE BUILDING OF GOD, FOR GOD. 



ion and abode for eternity. Its materials are all 
chosen, not according to the reason of things, or 
the will of the great God of Eternity, but according 
to the freaks of his own fancy, the rule of his own 
appetites and passions, the indulgence of his own 
present pleasure. All the fixtures even for lighting 
up this abode, and making it comfortable, are 
according to the same law of present self-indulgence, 
wrought out of the same sinful ingredients; and 
the very atmosphere of the dwelling is of the same 
elemental stuff. Now, the house of a man's char- 
acter, even thus constituted, may be all very grand, 
costly, luxurious, splendid in appearance, and may 
abide quiet for the present ; but what will become 
of it the moment the fire tries it, the moment a 
flame is kindled in it, the moment that light, by 
which it must be lighted in eternity, if ever lighted 
at all, is let into it and upon it ? What will become 
of it, when the light of God's holiness enters into it, 
flashes through it? Why, indeed, we have the 
answer to this question in the declaration of scrip- 
ture, that to the wicked and the unbelieving, our 
God is a consuming fire. Such the Divine attri- 
butes must be, in the eternal woild, to a man whose 
character is builded out of such materials, without 
Christ, without God, without prayer, without holi- 
ness, without hope. 

For we know that we are designed to be, every 
one of us, according to God's rule, a dwelling place 
for God, a living temple, of which God shall be the 
happy life and soul. And the building built up in 
God and with God and for God here, and so formed 



THE BUILDING OF GOD, FOE GOD. 239 

that God can inhabit it forever, will be blessed in 
eternity, an immortal temple, a house not made with 
hands, eternal in the heavens. And nnless so 
formed that God can enter it, can dwell in it, can be 
glorified by it, then the moment God touches it, the 
moment the light of God's holiness blazes upon it, 
surrounds it, flashes within, it will be all a flame of 
fire unquenchable. All the fixtures running to and 
fro in such a character are of inflammable materials, 
that will kindle with the fires of hell ; all the furni- 
ture of such a character has only the seal of the 
self-willed maker, and of God's wrath. And the 
character thus formed in sin is of such a nature, that 
that very light which is necessary in order to light 
up and render happy any created soul, will inevita- 
bly consume it, the moment it meets it. That flame 
of purity and love, which alone can form the possi- 
bility of any man's blessed residence in the eternal 
world, will set the whole residence on fire, a lurid 
and conflicting fire, a retributive and self-avenging 
fire, forever burning, yet forever unconsumed, in 
the very materials out of which the soul's dwelling, 
nay, the soul's adopted nature, was constructed. 

See, then, what you are doing, O man of sin ! 
You wish to be saved, you wish to be received into 
heaven when you die. You wish by no means to 
be lost, you are not willing to contemplate that as 
your destiny, or to believe it possible. You wish 
that your existence in the eternal world may be a 
blessed and blissful existence, that for you there may 
be a mansion of eternal rest, that your name may 
be found in God's book of life, and that yours for- 



2-10 THE BUILDING OF GOD, FOR GOD. 

ever may be a place in the city of the righteous. 
Consider, then, what this wish really signifies. It 
means that you may be permitted to dwell with 
God, and that God would deign to dwell with you 
forever and ever. It means that you desire to have 
God's own abode within you, and to enter into an 
eternal and intimate communion with God, so that 
you shall be as cognizant and conscious of God's 
presence and inspection, as God is cognizant of your 
existence. It means that you desire a state of 
being, where every thought, wish, impulse and emo- 
tion shall be as clear to the eye of Jehovah, and 
you yourself conscious of it, as this material 
world and you yourself in it, or the men that walk 
upon it, or the trees and flowers that adorn it, are 
to your own eye. It means that you desire to meet 
God, and to have the blaze of all His attributes 
upon you and within you ; that you desire to be 
forever fixed, where you can never for an instant 
escape the notice of His all- seeing eye, where your 
inmost being will be turned to Him as to the sun, 
where not a thought can arise, not a feeling be ex- 
perienced, not a wish formed, not an impulse 
cherished, but it will confront the instant blaze of 
the Divine holiness ; and where, consequently, un- 
less you are one with God, your being will flash 
forth in hostility, just as the house of nitre, or of 
solidified oxygen, or alcohol, would kindle at the 
touch of fire. 

Just consider, then, O creature of such tremen- 
dous responsibilities, if you be a stranger to grace, 
what it is that you are doing, while you are living 



THE BUILDING OF GOD, FOR GOD. 241 

in your sins, that is, while you are living in neglect 
of Christ Jesus, and of prayer, and without God in 
the world. For, to be without God is to be alienat- 
ed from Him, it is to be without holiness, it is to be 
passing on towards Him, in the habitual formation 
of a character that cannot bear His sight, a character 
in hostility against Him. What are you doing to 
prepare your own heart, your own mind, your own 
consciousness, your thoughts and your affections, for 
the habitual presence of Grod ? What are you doing 
to make your own being, with its spiritual furni- 
ture and habits, a temple for His indwelling, holi- 
ness and love ? What are you doing in preparation 
for that meeting of your soul with Grod, to which, 
on the supposition of the least hope of a happy 
existence in the future world, you are advancing ? 
What in preparation for that most intimate commu- 
nion with God, and closeness of His inspection, 
which your very wish to be happy in the future 
world implies? What have you done already, 
supposing you should now die, just as you are, what 
have you accomplished in preparation for God's 
taking up His glorious and blissful abode with you ? 
Alas, is there any joy within your heart at the 
thoughts of such a meeting, or do your thoughts 
draw back in terror as the reality draws near ? Un- 
less you are changed indeed, and possess a new 
spiritual character, unless you are submissive to 
God, and a partaker of His holiness, could God abide 
with you? Is there any such possibility? Can 
there be for you, in any such blissful sense, a build- 
ing of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in 

11 



242 THE BUILDING OF GOD, FOR GOD. 

the heavens? Would not the meeting of every 
prayerless being, every unregenerate heart, every 
sin-defiled soul with God, be just that of antagonist 
forces, incompatible, not to be united; that of 
infinite righteousness and utter sinfulness, infinite 
justice and uncancelled guilt, that of the Divine 
sovereignty and the sinful soul's habitual and su- 
preme selfishness, that of the will of the creature 
and the Creator in uttermost eternal conflict ? 

It is one of the mightiest, most overwhelming 
truths of our existence, that we are all advancing 
into the immediate presence of God, all coming 
where we shall see him face to face, where the 
nature and operation of his attributes will be clearer 
to the soul, and more sensibly experienced, than 
the objects and qualities of the material world to 
the bodily senses. The meeting must take place. 
It is the great event to which we are all hastening. 
It is the event which is to determine our eternal 
destiny, according to the character with which we 
meet God. And one would think the sense of this 
truth, the remembrance of it, and a watchfulness 
accordingly, would never be out of our minds, but 
would inspire us with a spirit of incessant prayer. 
One would think that the knowledge of a meeting, 
so rapidly near, with Infinite Holiness, would arm 
us with such an energetic and instinctive terror and 
abhorrence of all sin, that we should recoil from the 
least approach of it, and start as from the upreared 
head of an adder in the way. One would think 
that the very breath of ceaseless prayer in our 
hearts, and the thought and the yearning co-present 



THE BUILDING OF GOD, FOR GOD. 243 

with all other thoughts, would be, Oh Grod ! cleanse 
me from my sins, and make me like to thee ! Oh 
Thou, whom I must shortly meet, and whose very 
love, if I be not a partaker of it, will burn me, like 
thine own holiness, as a consuming fire, take pos- 
session of me now for thyself, baptize me now with 
the Holy Spirit and with fire. Let the refining 
flame of thy love kindle within me, and never go 
out, but burn on, till every sinful thing shall be 
consumed, and every native faculty transfigured, 
and every impulse of will, feeling, and emotion 
baptized in that regenerating flame ! 

And how can such a prayer be answered, and to 
whom, if it be sincere, will it certainly bring the 
yearning heart and soul, that the whole being may 
be thus gloriously and forever transfigured, regen- 
erated, and delivered from all sin ? Oh ! to Jesus, 
to the Son of God, our Saviour, to the great Physi- 
cian of the soul ! Behold the Lamb of Grod, who 
taketh away the sin of the world ! There is the 
Being, to whom love will bring you, there is the 
Being, who will answer your love, and will fulfil, 
as he must have inspired, all blissful and heavenly 
desires within you. "Jesus answered and said, If a 
man love me, he will keep my words: and my 
Father will love him, and we will come to him and 
make our abode with him." " Lord, to whom shall 
we go, but unto thee? Thou hast the words of 
eternal life !" 



€\}t Jfamilg in fUaiuiu 

That is a wonderfully glorious passage in the 
Epistle to the Ephesians, which reads thus ; " Of 
whom the whole family in heaven and earth is 
named." The glory of the whole context is infi- 
nite, and this is but a sort of parenthesis before the 
prayer. But the full comprehensiveness and gran- 
deur of this parenthesis, can be known only in the 
Eedeemer's second coming, and final everlasting 
reign. As all beings were created by him and for 
him, so angels and archangels, principalities and 
powers of heavenly height and glory, as well as the 
redeemed from our fallen world, are named in him 
and for him, for he is before all things, and by him 
all things consist. 

We have had occasion to refer to the manner in 
which Gk>d makes heaven our home; gives us a 
home locality there ; throws around the idea of place 
there the same sweet associations that cluster in the 
heart and delight the imagination at the word home, 
here. But we are carried still farther. There is 
also the word family in heaven ; indeed, the only 
time in which this word is spoken in the New Tes- 
tament is here, in this mention of the whole family in 



THE FAMILY IN HEAVEN. 245 

heaven. There is a family circle there ; there are 
family ties and associations dearer than all ties on 
earth ; and if we should descend from the vast and 
mighty sweep of this whole phrase, " the whole 
family in heaven and on earth," which takes in all 
the redeemed out of every nation, and kindred, and 
tongue, and tribe, from the beginning to the end of 
time, and stop at the literality of the first clause ; if 
we should cut out those striking words, the whole 
family in heaven, from their connection, and inter- 
pret them of one household, applying there in heaven 
something like the very thought and feeling of a 
loving family on earth, with its particular and strong 
affections, in which a stranger intermeddleth not, we 
should not perhaps be far out of the way. Nor can 
there be anything more delightful than the thought 
of a whole family in heaven. No doubt, there will 
be many such — many whole households, transplanted 
entire, not one left out or missing, from earth into 
the kingdom of heaven. There will be whole fami- 
lies gathered there, through the blessed instrumen- 
tality of one faithful and beloved member of the 
household, first brought to Jesus. There will be 
children gathered by the piety of parents, and parents 
gathered by the piety of children ; brothers drawn 
to Christ by sisters, and sisters drawn by brothers ; 
and whole families saved by the faith and prayers 
of one. 

One of the two that heard John speak, and fol- 
lowed Jesus, was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. 
He first findeth his. own brother, Simon, and he 
brought him to Jesus. That is one example given 



246 THE FAMILY IN HEAVEN. 

us in God's own record of the manner in which He 
maketh up His jewels ; how the endearments and 
affections of onr family ties and duties sometimes 
lead on those of grace; the earthly affection brings 
the heavenly to bear upon the soul. And can there 
be the least doubt that in heaven itself, the tie on 
earth so strong between Andrew and Simon, and 
made the means of the salvation of the one, through 
the instrumentality of the other, and thus exalted 
and glorified, even here, will be recognized, will 
make the family there, in some sense, a family still ? 
"Why, we may learn something on this subject, even 
from the lost in the world of woe, as presented by 
our Saviour. We find the elder brother in the gulf 
of flame, trembling at the thought of meeting the 
family circle there ; five brethren, whom he expected 
to meet, and to meet as brought thither partly by 
his own example, and in such a manner that the 
family on earth would be known as a family in hell. 
That direction, also, of the Lord of the harvest, to 
gather the tares in bundles, and bind them for the 
burning, has a marked meaning here ; for the prin- 
ciple of association and participation in sinful exam- 
ple, instrumentality and character, such as marks 
and attends an evil family all through life, will be 
one of the principles of association and relationship 
in an endless retribution. And the same principle 
of association in heavenly and holy relationship, 
character, example and influence, marking the fami- 
lies of redeemed on earth, will hold them peculiarly 
known and near in heaven. There will be trains of 
blissful causes, sacred instrumentalities, set at work 



THE FAMILY IN HEAVEN. 247 

in family circles here, the results of which will be 
seen, marked, traced, admired there, holding the 
same circle nearer and nearer through eternity, 
nearer and dearer in Christ, and in one another, in 
and through Him.. 

But if the whole family in heaven and earth is 
recognized, there are also the more particular repre- 
sentations, and representatives of the family there. 
There are children in heaven. There are babes in 
heaven, and there must be an infant's heavenly dis- 
cipline there. Of such, said our blessed Lord, is the 
kingdom of Heaven ; and we may suppose that he 
had in view not merely the childlike temper and 
disposition of a new-born soul in his kingdom here, 
but the fact that the kingdom of the redeemed there 
is made up, in so great a degree, of little children. 

I shall go to him, but he will not return to me, ex- 
claimed David, speaking of his own babe, that God 
had taken, and speaking of the child as at rest with 
God, in the presence of God in heaven. Thither 
the affections of David travelled ; there his hopes 
were placed ; there was his eternal dwelling-place 
and home. When he himself should depart from 
this world, he expected to be with God in glory. 
Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell ; he could speak 
that promise of himself, as well as a prediction of 
the Messiah's resurrection. By the Earnest of the 
Spirit he was confident, for God had wrought him 
for the self-same thing, and he had the witness of 
the Spirit within him that he was a child of God. 
" The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and 
my cup. Thou wilt show me the path of life : in 



248 THE FAMILY IN HEAVEN. 

thy presence is fulness of joy ; at thy right hand 
there are pleasures forevermore. As for me, I will 
behold thy face in righteousness. I shall be satis- 
fied, when I awake, with thy likeness." 

But his child had gone thither, to God, before 
him. If there is anything clear in David's confi- 
dence, it is this, that his child was in heaven, and 
there in heaven he expected to meet him. I shall 
go to him. I shall rejoin him in God's good time, 
when it pleases God to take me also to my heavenly 
home. And the confidence has a personal and not 
merely a local direction. I shall go to him, not 
merely to the place where he is, but to him. It was 
in the heart of David to recognize his child again in 
glory ; and the confidence does not seem to be set 
down as a mere imagination, springing out of a present 
fondness, or a mere desire that it might be so ; but 
out of the darkness of his present sorrow it was the 
breaking forth of a great truth. It was an inspira- 
tion flashing from earth to heaven. As a sheet of 
lightning in the blackness of a midnight storm re- 
veals instantly and vividly the whole horizon, so 
this confident declaration of David lights up the 
whole landscape, not only of heavenly realities, but 
of the Jewish belief in regard to them ; not only 
throws a stream of sudden radiance into the revealed 
spiritual world, but shows the contemplation of a 
future existence habitual to the Hebrew mind, and 
that, too, on occasion of the death of an infant. 

There was no surprise in David's servants, as 
though he had announced to them a new and most 
surprising, most overwhelming doctrine, such as it 



THE FAMILY IN HEAVEN. 249 

must have been if it had been new; but David 
enunciated it, and they received it, with the utmost 
calmness of a customary conviction, as a fixture of 
their own belief and instruction, to which they were 
to resort for consolation and submission under such 
a bereavement. Here, again, we have the scepticism 
and blindness of those who would dephlogisticate 
out of the word of God, in the Old Testament especi- 
ally its living breath and flame of thought and knowl- 
edge in regard to a future world of rewards and 
punishments, put to shame and scorn. And out of 
the mouth of a babe, speaking as it were from the 
eternal world, God perfects truth and praise. Here 
we have a great prophet of God, speaking to the 
people over the grave of his own child, concerning 
a truth which they had all been taught from God's 
Word, as well as declaring out of his own impulse of 
Divine inspiration, I shall go to him, but he shall 
not return to me ! 

Now, as to the recognition in the heavenly world, 
it is to be marked that David himself did not die, 
did not depart to his heavenly home, to rejoin what- 
ever loved ones of his family circle might be gath- 
ered there, till near twenty years after this beloved 
child had gone from its cradle to Abraham's bosom, 
to the companionship and glory of the celestial 
world. Twenty years the child would have been in 
heaven with Moses and Elias in glory, a lamb in the 
fold of Christ there, before his earthly parent would 
again see him ; and could he be expected to know, 
in the bright form of a seraph, educated for twenty 
years in the presence and likeness of Jesus, his own 

11* 



250 THE FAMILY IN HEAVEN. 

departed babe? "Why not, as well as Elijah, when 
translated to heaven, could be expected to know 
Moses, who had been dwelling in heaven five hun- 
dred years before Elijah went thither? There 
would be no more of mystery in the one recognition 
than in the other, but an equal delight and glory. 
That a Christian parent should recognize a child, 
passed into the skies, and educated there, is no more 
mysterious than that Moses and Elijah should recog- 
nize each other, or rather know each other, though 
they never met on earth, but only in heaven. 

But whether that come to the mind as a mystery 
or not, there is something unspeakably delightful 
in following a little child, in imagination, into the 
heavenly world, and dwelling on the blissfulness 
and glory of its development there. There must 
be a nursery, an infant school in heaven, a peculiar 
training of these buds and blossoms of immortal 
being, which for all heaven may be a scene of 
greater rapture and delight, than perhaps any other 
of the infinite wonders of redemption, even in the 
heavenly world. What a sight must it be, that of 
the spirit of a babe, an infant, a prattling child, 
growing up in heaven, opening, developing, in the 
image of Jesus, perhaps beneath the guardianship 
and teaching of other angels — an employment how 
ecstatic, how divine ! 

For aught we know, there may be a form of 
glory, or degrees and qualities of glory, resulting 
from such a development in heaven, transcending 
all other manifestations of the manifold wisdom of 
God through the church to all ages. And as we 



THE FAMILY IN HEAVEN. 251 

have reason to believe that so vast a preponderating 
multitude of those transmitted from our world to 
heaven die in infancy and childhood, so the greater 
part of heaven is filled with just such scenes, and 
heaven might be conceived as one vast ecstatic holy 
school of youthful happy spirits. What curious, 
wondrous, blissful forms of the wisdom and love of 
the Creator, combined with the perfection of the 
work of our Divine Redeemer, may be seen in the 
evolution of the infant immortal spirit from the very 
bud of being, — who shall tell ! Who has not felt, at 
times, an earnest desire to look into the invisible 
workings of an infant's mind, to see the dawnings 
of thought, reason, self-consciousness, to know the 
motions of this wondrous opening and dreaming 
soul, even as we know our own ! Oh certainly, to 
see the growth of a mind in heaven, to watch its 
developings in Christ, above the brightness of the 
firmament, must be a process of glory so exquisite, 
that nothing which we now see in the grandeur and 
beauty of all this material universe can bear any 
proportion to its loveliness. 

But we pass from the family to the name. Of 
whom the whole family in heaven and earth are 
named. It is Christ the Saviour. Not a creature 
of the redeemed of all our race, infant or aged, but 
bears his name. All are there through the virtue 
of his blood, and through that alone, without which 
no more the babe than the child a hundred years 
old, or the chief of sinners, could ever enter heaven. 
The whole family, young and old, are named of 
Christ, washed in his blood, clothed in his right- 



252 THE FAMILY IN HEAVEN. 

eousness, and in him, and him alone, without fault 
before the throne of God. This is the certainty, 
and the only certainty, alike of the babe's salvation, 
and that of the matured, believing child of God. 
It is that Christ has died for the sins of the whole 
world, and that his blood cleanseth from all sin. 
It is that the child as well as the sinner a hundred 
years old, needs a Saviour, and that Jesus died for 
children. All that are in heaven bear his name, 
and only thus can any be in heaven. 

It is as difficult for God to save a child as a 
grown person, equally a wondrous work of his 
Divine redemption ; but it is also equally easy ; for 
Christ has died, and it is not on account of any im- 
agined or possible innocence or merit, that any 
human being, infant or aged, is ever saved, but only 
on account of the merit and the death of Christ. 
So the whole family in heaven and earth are named 
of him, though we have reason to believe the greater 
proportion by far of the members of the family at 
any one time, and at all times, passing from earth to 
heaven, are infant members. Their first lisp of 
language is his name, and the first exercise of belief 
into which their minds open, is faith in his blood, 
and the first and simplest feeling and emotions in 
which their hearts beat, intelligent and self-conscious, 
are of gratitude and love to him. And the first 
song in which their joy finds utterance must be the 
anthem, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain; and 
their infant melodies may be the sweetest of all 
heaven's melody, and the grandest part in those 
celestial services, that which they bear in the halle- 



THE FAMILY IN HEAVEN. 253 

luialis of redemption. Perhaps, indeed, it is this 
very thing, of which the Psalmist caught a view by 
inspiration, when he exclaimed, " Lord ! thou hast 
set thy glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth 
of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise ! " 
No literal interpretation can be given to that passage 
in any other way. But if you translate it of the 
infant singers in heaven, it is a very natural window 
opened into the glories of the celestial world. 

The assurance that little children, through the 
blood of Jesus Christ, are taken to heaven, should 
greatly mitigate the grief of parents and friends, 
when Grod takes them away. They cannot help 
sorrowing, for ever since Adam and Eve left the 
Garden of Eden and mourned the death of Abel, 
the loss of children has been and must be regarded 
as one of the severest of earthly trials ; but they 
must not sorrow as those who have no hope. The 
sting of death is taken away, and the imagination 
and heart can follow the little one into a world of 
glory, where there are no conceptions of beauty and 
blessedness, in which they may not properly array 
it. All that ever they could depict to themselves, 
or by the Earnest of the Spirit ever foretasted, or 
could desire to experience, of holiness, radiance and 
happiness in the heavenly world, they may feel sure 
is outdone, is overpassed, by the infant cherubs that 
have gone before them. If the fancy in vain strives 
to paint the glories that surround the believer, 
when on rising from the river of death, the visions 
and realities of the celestial world burst upon the 
soul, still more impossible is it to conceive the 



254 THE FAMILY IN HEAVEN. 

beauty and happiness of a babe in heaven. What 
a privilege it is for parents whom God has bereaved, 
to feel that they have children there! What a 
privilege to have consecrated them to God, to have 
prayed over them, to have led them to the Saviour, 
to have offered them to God in baptism, to have 
claimed His promise for them, to have given them 
to Jesus as the members of His family, the lambs of 
His fold ! And now, if God has taken them, from 
how many thousand evils, snares, temptations, 
dangers, sins, have they been snatched ! Neither 
pain, nor sickness, nor sorrow shall they ever know 
more. 

And what education could the most careful parents 
ever have given them, compared with that angelic 
and ecstatic discipline in which they are nur- 
tured there in the perfect likeness and beholding 
of the Kedeemer; or what care could the most 
anxious parents ever have bestowed upon them, 
compared with the care of that Saviour who has 
taken them to His bosom ; or what fortune could 
the most indulgent parents ever have provided for 
them, though all the riches of the universe had been 
placed at their disposal, compared with tha,t inherit- 
ance of which they are with Christ the heirs, those 
glorious mansions they inhabit, that blessed society 
where they rest ? And we may add, what happi- 
ness could they ever have conferred upon the most 
delighted parents here, compared with that they are 
conferring in heaven upon myriads, who perhaps 
gather from the remotest dominions of the King of 
saints, to gaze upon their glory, and to admire with 



THE FAMILY IN HEAVEN. 255 

new love and gratitude, and new ecstasy of enjoy- 
ment and surprise, the glory of the Saviour revealed 
so ravishingly in them. If there is joy among the 
angels of God over one sinner that repenteth, oh 
what joy likewise over every babe received to 
glory! 

But again, and more solemnly still, the consider- 
ation of this theme ought to make us think of the 
sacredness, preciousness and glory of the work of 
training up a little child for Christ and His King- 
dom. How blessed the thought of a whole family 
in heaven ! How precious, how delightful, the 
mutual communion, example, instrumentality, effort, 
faith, prayer, by which one after another, coming 
into the Christian life here, enter on the life of 
glory there, till all are gathered at length, a dear 
unbrokerj family before's Grod's throne ! How in- 
finitely important the work of faith, love, instruc- 
tion and prayer, to be applied continually by 
parents upon the susceptible hearts and ductile 
minds of their little ones, that from the earliest 
period, the image and superscription of Jesus may 
be impressed and growing daily! "We know not 
how rapidly they may be passing from the time, 
when, if they were suddenly taken, we might feel 
the assurance that Jesus has taken them to Himself 
in glory, to the period of conscious unbelief and 
voluntary neglect and rejection of Jesus from the 
heart. What fervent effort ought to be used, what 
earnest prayer, what affectionate persuasive instruc- 
tion, that they may not enter upon that period, or 
if entered on it, that they may turn from it, and 



256 THE FAMILY IN HEAVEN. 

hasten to the Saviour, in faith, penitence and love, 
the youthful happy subjects of His sanctifying grace ! 
Both the uncertainty of life, and the certainty that 
if habits of youthful piety are not commenced, the 
habits of procrastination and of sin are greatly and 
constantly strengthening, and the prospect becom- 
ing less and less favorable of a conversion to God, 
ought to impel every Christian parent to an earnest 
heartfelt, never-ceasing diligence, in pleading and 
applying the instructions and promises of the 
gracious Saviour, and the affectionate persuasive 
power of a heavenly example. 



The power of an endless death ! Amazing and 
infinitely dreadful expression ! Yet thus hath eternal 
life its infinite and opposite extreme ; and little in- 
deed could we know of either but by the disclosures 
of Divine Eevelation. Accordingly, in one of the 
grandest chapters in the book of Job, we have the 
following sublime and impressive interrogation from 
the Almighty: "Have the gates of death been 
opened unto thee ? or hast thou seen the doors of 
the shadow of death?" 

And what mortal can answer it ? "Who hath ever 
gone down to those portals, or been admitted within 
the secrets of that prison house, and returned? 
What living man knows anything about death, even 
the death of the body, save as he sees some of the 
phases of departing life ; but when it is gone, knows 
not which way it tied, nor how, nor whither ? And 
as to the changing substance that remains, the mould, 
the worm, the putrefaction, the corruption of the 
grave, all that is no more a process of death, than the 
disintegration of a granite mountain by the rain, the 
light, the air, frost, fire and sunbeams. And what- 
ever thou hast seen or known of disease or pain, 



258 THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS DEATH. 

dark- walking pestilence or noon- wasting destruction, 
fretting leprosies, plagues, lazar-houses, consump- 
tions, fevers, poisons, wounds, or the bloodiest mur- 
derous carnage of war, if tliou art yet alive, thou 
knowest nothing of death. So far from having 
entered the gates of death, thou hast not seen even 
the doors of its shadow. 

The doors of the shadow of death ! Kightly 
considered, there is surely something exceedingly ter- 
rific and awful in this expression. Where are those 
doors? And if we were admitted within them, 
what is there there sending such shadow here ? All 
that we see and know is but the shadow ; and if such 
be the shadow, what must be the reality ! and where 
is it? Sometimes Grod has caught us up as in a 
vision ; once He stood upon the world, and bade us 
look down into the gulf, opening it before us ; and 
always He makes us know that the substance, which 
sends, from the doors of the unseen, such a shadow, 
englooming the world, is infinite depths beyond the 
confines of time, filling eternity. And death here, 
Shadow or Skeleton, is the King of Terrors, because 
we know him not till we get beyond, within those 
unseen portals, whence this vast, wide, creeping, 
desolating shadow issues and enshrouds us. 

Death! Its shadow covers the world, darkens 
it, and fills all hearts with gloomy fears and fore- 
bodings. All their lifetime, through fear of death, 
men are subject unto bondage. Its shadow is here, 
but its substance and its power are the power of an 
endless life, life in death, and death in life, conflict- 
ing forever. The reality of death is in eternity. 



THE POWER OF AN" ENDLESS DEATH. 259 

And that death is called in scripture the second 
death. This is that, of which the first death is but 
the shadow. This is the last, and, in some respects, 
the most terrible designation of it in God's word — ■ 
the second death. There is nothing after that, but 
that holds on, perpetual, eternal. And it is under 
this designation that we must examine it. It is 
appointed unto men once to die ; but that death is 
scarcely worthy of the name of death. The death 
that comes after the judgment — the death of the 
soul' — the death of sin, and of retribution for sin — 
the death eternal — that is death indeed, that is the 
second death. Salvation from that is indeed salva- 
tion. Anything less than that would be but the 
purchase of a lease, that would of itself inevitably 
run out. Eedemption from the second death was a 
work worthy the interposition and atoning sacrifice 
of the Son of God ; but nothing less than eternity 
made it so. Nothing less than the power of an 
endless life, on one hand, and the power of an end- 
less death, on the other, demanded, for a High Priest 
and Saviour, the Almighty, the Word that was with 
God, and was God. 

Under this view, let us examine it. We have to 
set out with the great fact of scripture and of our 
own experience, that death is death in sin, and that 
only. Dead in sin, dead in trespasses and sins, and 
such like expressions, are some of the forms convey- 
ing the description, or announcing the reality, of 
this state. The sting of death is sin, and the strength 
of sin is 1jfre law, — expressions which carry us at 
once beyond the grave, not referring merely, or by 



260 THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS DEATH. 

any means mainly, to that shadow of death under 
which this body passes to the tomb, but to the reality 
and power of death in eternity ; and that reality and 
power is sin. The first thing, then, to be noted of 
the substance of death, under the power of an end- 
less life, is, that it is perfection in sin. 

It is not until this corruptible shall have put on 
incorruption, and this mortal, immortality — not till 
after the passing of the shadow of death, and the 
raising of the body from its dominion into the glori- 
fied body — that, in eternal life, the saying is brought 
to pass that is written, Death is swallowed up in 
victory. Oh death ! where is thy sting ? Gone for- 
ever, because sin is gone. And, therefore, in the 
last description of the blessed in Christ, the all-em* 
bracing proposition is, that there shall be no more 
death. Over such the second death hath no power ; 
for there is no sin, but an eternal victory over it, 
eternal, absolute, perfect holiness ; in the imparted 
and participated nature of the Eedeemer. 

And on the other hand, it is not till the absolute, 
unmingled mastery of sin beyond the grave, not till 
the destruction of both soul and body in hell, that 
life is swallowed up of death, and death is seen and 
known, as sin is seen and known, by and in eterni- 
ty. In this view there is a tremendous emphasis in 
the declaration that sin, when it is finished, bringeth 
forth death. When sin is finished, the whole being 
is alive with it, in a living, positive, active death, 
perfect, unmingled, unalleviated. There is no good 
left. It is absolute evil, unbalanced, unmodified, 
unmitigated. Perfection in sin is the negation of 



THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS DEATH. 261 

all good, and the active despotism of all evil. 
Neither of these can be without the other. John 
says, even in this world, He that loveth not his 
brother, abideth in death. He knoweth nothing of 
life, nothing of God, nothing of heaven. In this 
the children of God are manifest, and the children 
of the devil. In the absence of all good, all evil 
reigns. Even now, the carnal mind is enmity 
against God; it is not subject to the law of God, 
neither indeed can be. But enmity against God is 
the parent of all other enmity. Our blessed Lord 
said, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin ; 
and again, by the Apostle John, Whosoever commit- 
teth sin is of the devil. And again, our blessed 
Lord, Ye are of your father the devil, a murderer 
from the beginning ; and by the Apostle John, He 
that hateth his brother is a murderer. 

Now here is the dominant spirit of heaven, and 
the dominant spirit of hell, love on the one side, and 
hate on the other, and each in infinite perfection. 
To be ruled by the spirit of hate is to be by nature 
the children of wrath and children of the devil. 
When that nature is given over to itself, then there 
can be nothing but despair, no more possibility of 
good, no motive for good, no desire towards it, no 
possibility of ever communicating aught but evil. 
And as the happiness of heaven consists in the 
knowledge of good, so the misery of hell consists in 
the knowledge of evil. In both directions the 
measure is infinite. Approximation towards God, 
in His knowledge, likeness and love, is the rule in 
heaven, distance from Him, and enmity against Him, 



262 THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS DEATH. 

is the rule in hell. And there is no half-way, but a 
perfection in both extremes. This is the nature of 
things in a world where all tendencies, both good 
and evil, will be left to a perfect development. The 
points of starting are separate and absolute, and the 
directions opposite, and so the course in either case 
runs on, according to the judgment pronounced in 
the shutting up of God's own word, He that is un- 
just, let him be unjust still, and he that is filthy, let 
him be filthy still ; and he that is righteous, let him 
be righteous still, and he that is holy, let him be 
holy still. 

This then brings us to a second manifest point in 
the power of an endless death, that it is progression 
in sin. As it is the power of an endless life, that it 
is progression in holiness, in the knowledge and 
likeness of God, and consequently in happiness in- 
conceivable, immeasurable, so it is the power of an 
endless death, that it is a living death, and a 
progressive death, in the increase of wickedness, 
the knowledge and experience of evil, and con- 
sequently the endurance of misery. Here we are 
on simple and plain ground. Character is progress- 
ive, unalterably so, even in this world, in one 
direction or the other. And here, also, character 
would be exclusively bad or good, and sin with the 
sinful would go to an instant entireness and suprem- 
acy, if it were not for the interposition of a Saviour, 
which has made this world a world of restraint and 
grace. Even under all opposing, preventing and 
reclaiming influences, evil character, if not changed 
by grace, exasperates and grows, even to the end. 



THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS DEATH. 263 

Character accumulates and shoots onward. There 
is nothing that gathers such strength, and at length ac- 
quires it even from opposition. This is the power of 
habit. The progression of the mind in evil is tre- 
mendous, and wickedness burneth as a fire. There 
comes a time, even this side the grave, when the 
power of habit is absolutely irresistible, and passion 
is like a forest conflagration. Yet here there is vast 
and constant restraint. What then will it be, when 
all restraint is taken away, and what when ages on 
ages shall have passed, and all the while the habit 
growing, and the evil nature becoming more and 
more permanent and predominant. Then will pas- 
sion be seen in its omnipotence, and the will in its 
immortality and inflexibility as the slave of the 
passion, yet one with it, as the regent of a hurricane, 
bound to it, and madly driving through eternity. 
Progression in sin is as inevitable as progression in 
holiness. 

In the third place, there will be communion in 
sin ; a community, and yet anarchy, a fellowship, and 
yet repulsion, nearness, and yet malignity. Heaven 
is a social state, a state of perfect love; hell is an 
unsocial state, and yet a community ; but of perfect 
wrath and hatred. The conception is fearful beyond 
expression, of a world of intelligent beings, demoniac 
in nature and by habit, abhorred of one another, 
repulsive and repelled, and yet, by very wicked- 
ness and hate compelled into proximity, suspicious, 
angry, raging, tormenting and tormented, living in 
malice and envy, hateful and hating one another. 
Fearful as the conception is, it may be in a great 



264 THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS DEATH. 

degree realized, even in this world ; and in fact the 
last expressions used, are just merely descriptions 
by the Apostle of a state of society on earth, of 
which he and his friends had formed a part. It was 
a state of society little better than that of Sodom 
and Gomorrah, the state of all bad passions dominant, 
with little restraint save that of fear, hatred and 
revenge. The description of such a state on earth 
is to be found in the first chapter of the Epistle to 
the Eomans ; a description of human beings, filled 
with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, 
covetousness, maliciousness ; full of envy, murder, 
debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, 
haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors 
of evil things, disobedient to parents, without under- 
standing, covenant-breakers, without natural affec- 
tion, implacable, unmerciful; who, knowing the 
judgment of God, that they which commit such 
things are worthy of death, not only do the same, 
but have pleasure in those that do them. 

What have we in this account, when all restraint 
is removed, but the very elements of hell in de- 
praved human nature ? And we have only to carry 
forward the evil which we see here, to a progressive 
social perfection there, a perfect unrestrained devel- 
opment ; we need only take what we are by nature, 
in our depravity, and let it run on at natural com- 
pound interest, and no hell of revelation could dis- 
close more dreadful realities. We only need to take 
a wicked community, and endow that community 
with the power of endless life and progression in 
wickedness, that is, with the power of endless death* 



THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS DEATH. 265 

The good are all drawn off to a better world. There 
is left only in the seething mixture the dross of the 
universe. It is one of the descriptions of Grod's 
justice and goodness in the word of God, 'Thou 
puttest away all the wicked of the earth like dross. 
It is the scum and corruption of this universe that 
will form the social state of hell. The universe is 
to be purified, and its dregs, its impurities, as dross, 
when the scurf rises to the surface from the crucible, 
shall be thrown away, shall be gathered into one 
place. The wicked shall be driven away in his 
wickedness, and the strongest spirits in this seething 
mass of demoniacs will still be uppermost, and there 
will be plans of evil carried careering over ages, 
ambition towering upon ambition, empires and 
shoals of evil natures driven on over the depths of 
hell, and chasing one another like waves as wide as 
the ocean. Eaging waves of the sea, foaming out 
their own shame, clouds without water, carried 
about of winds ; trees whose fruit withereth, with- 
out fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots ; 
wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness 
of darkness forever ! Such are some of the express- 
ions in scripture descriptive of the character of those 
who shall compose this fraternity of perfect, pro- 
gressive sin, and absolute despair. Separated from 
the good they must be, and gathered into one place 
they must be, by the very necessity of G-od's good- 
ness and love as the guardian of his universe, no 
more to permit the combination of evil with the 
good, nor the spread of temptation, nor the power 

of bad example. How terrific is the thought of 

12 



266 THE POWEB OF AN ENDLESS DEATH. 

such a community! How fearful the imagination, 
how dire the prospect, for an immortal intelligent 
nature, of spending eternity in such companionship ! 
Yet such are the very terms of judgment announced 
by our blessed Lord beforehand, " Depart, ye cursed, 
into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his 
angels." What remorse, recrimination, angry despair, 
weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, must 
constitute the materials of social intercourse there, 
we can more easily in silence contemplate and shud- 
der at, than openly express. 

In the solemn providence of God, in the deep 
valley of Hinnom, outside the city of Jerusalem, 
there was of old a place of infinite abomination, 
where the carcasses of animals, and the dead bodies 
of malefactors, were thrown together, and an inces- 
sant smouldering fire was kept up to consume them. 
It became an emblem of the place and state of ever- 
lasting torment of the wicked. The glorious pre- 
dictions of Isaiah close with it : " They shall go 
forth, and look upon the carcasses of the men that 
have transgressed against me, for their worm shall 
not die, neither shall their fire be quenched, and 
they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh." That 
outcast and detested place, that vale of death and 
putrefaction, where carcasses were festering with fire 
and worm together, day and night unquenchable, 
the energies of corruption always going on, and the 
elements of consumption always administered, that 
dreadful place God chose, to be some emblem, and 
indeed a most lively and terrible emblem, of the 
everlasting corruption and conflagration of the soul 



THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS DEATH. 267 

in sin, in the world of retribution and despair, where 
their worm dieth not, and the tire is not quenched. 
And may not these two agencies have been chosen 
on purpose to signify, the first the nature of sin as a 
corruption and undying worm in the conscience 
and the soul ; and the second, the external kindled 
fire, to signify the retributive and guardian justice 
of Grod, a fire which He will never quench, which 
never indeed can be quenched, being as eternal as 
his own goodness. Not once, nor twice, but manjr 
times, and sometimes with vast and mighty array of 
circumstantial imagery, our blessed Lord took up 
the same emblems, and wrought them, with solemn, 
awful, deliberate intensity of truth, into his appeals 
to the soul against sin and temptation. "If thy 
hand offend thee, cut it off; it is better for thee to 
enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go 
into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched. 
Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not 
quenched. And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off; 
it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than hav- 
ing two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that 
never shall be quenched. Where their worm dieth 
not, and the fire is not quenched. And if thine eye 
offend thee, pluck it out, it is better for thee to enter 
into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having 
two eyes to be cast into hell fire. Where their 
worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched." 

This then brings us to the last point, as to the 
power of an endless death, its absolute endlessness. 
It is eternity in sin. It is that, or it is nothing. It is 
that, or the shadow of death has no substance. It is 



268 THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS DEATH. 

that, or the system of redemption is a mockery, and the 
Bible the falsest, most deceitful book in the world. 
The wages of sin is death ; but the gift of God is eter- 
nal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord. The death is 
the opposite of life, and wages are paid to a living in- 
telligence. Forever, and forever, and forever ! The 
death itself of Christ for us, demonstrates the endless- 
ness of death without him, the eternal ruin of the soul, 
had he not died, and the everlasting destruction from 
the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his 
power, of those who obey not the gospel. 

And we are thus taught, with an exceeding and 
eternal weight of solemnity, the dreadful meaning 
of that declaration of our blessed Lord, "If ye be- 
lieve not in me, ye shall die in your sins." To die 
in your sins is to be buried to all eternity in them, 
beneath the experience and power of an endless 
death. But as there is no possibility of redemption 
from them but in Christ, no possibility of having 
them removed but by his Spirit, who but must feel 
the infinite importance of an immediate application 
for his mercy ? There is no time to lose. The law 
of sin and of death in our depraved natures is every 
day growing stronger, while we stay away from 
Christ. It can never be overcome but by him ; it 
will soon become the power of an endless death, if 
we do not go to him. It can be broken now, but 
only in him, only by the law of the spirit of life in 
Christ Jesus, working in our souls. If it be not 
broken now, it cannot forever. If you die in your 
sins, under this law of sin and of death, there will be 
no more change, but from wickedness to wickedness. 



THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS DEATH. 269 

How should there be? Are there any conceiv- 
able motives that could be tried in that world, that 
have not been tried in this, nnder a far more hope- 
ful state ? There can be no new atonement, there 
remaineth no more sacrifice for sin, but if there 
could be, it would be only a new world of proba- 
tion, and the law of sin and of death there, would 
act with still greater certainty and power than here, 
keeping the soul from Christ. But the neglect and 
contempt of Christ in this world is the very thing 
that shuts the soul out of heaven in that. On the 
supposition of the possibility of a change there, it 
must be by the power of motives, as here ; but no 
motive can be imagined, none can possibly exist, of 
greater power than that derived from the knowledge 
of an endless hell on the one hand, and heaven on 
the other, and from the knowledge of the way of 
salvation. But these motives have already been 
presented, and failed, in a world of probation and 
restraint, where guilt and habit were neither so great 
nor powerful ; and how should they ever be effect- 
ive, in a world of unmitigated rebellion and de- 
pravity. 

There must be again in such a world the an- 
nouncement of hope, and the moment there is hope, 
then again there is all the balance of disposition 
and indisposition, willingness and unwillingness, as 
in this world. And the discovery of there being 
still hope in that world, after all revelations to the 
contrary in this, would cut off all possibility of be- 
lief in eternal misery at all, so that the only motive 
that could have the least power against the habit 



270 THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS DEATH. 

and the love of sin would in reality be destroyed, 
and all possibility of change would be destroyed 
with it. All appeals would cease to be of any 
avail, and onward the soul of the sinner would be 
carried in the career of increasing and perpetual evil. 

But the whole question is set at rest by Grod's 
word. There is no room for any speculation on the 
subject. The wicked are driven away in their wick- 
edness, they die in their sins ; and these shall go 
away into everlasting punishment, and the right- 
eous into life eternal. If we notice the broaching of 
any other speculation, it is only to show, by the 
place where it lands us, that a sinful character itself, 
unchanged, constitutes and creates an essential and 
inevitable hell, even were there no other retribution 
than the last law announced in God's word, " He 
that is filthy let him be filthy still." And in the 
nature of things, the guilt, the power, the horror of 
such a hell must go on increasing. There could be 
no end. 

"We revert, then, to the necessity of an immediate 
application by faith, in prayer, in repentance, to the 
Lord Jesus. "We see clearly what, in our sins, we 
are coming to. Yet in point of fact we are not so 
much coming to the promised wrath, as carrying its 
elements in our souls, to their place of full develop- 
ment, to be there lighted, to be there set on fire, and 
left to burn on uninterrupted. What, in such a case, 
shall be done ? Who, that stays away from Christ, 
that defers for one single hour the outcry of the 
soul to him for mercy, is not guilty of a madness 
that cannot be described ? 



Cmtthmtfr Wtitktimm, mx <Mto 

The proverbs of the Hebrews are radiant with 
spiritual life. They are not merely a poor man's 
almanac, or a "pocket piece" of prudence for this 
world, or sagacity in making money. They are set 
deep in Divine sanctions, and the beginning of their 
wisdom is the fear of the Lord. How vast and 
solemn is that definite retributive disclosure to which 
we have referred, " The wicked is driven away in 
his wickedness, but the righteous hath hope in his 
death." 

This text of " picked words" was a commanding, 
well-known proverb of the nation, and is one of the 
plainest and most pointed sentences in the word of 
Grod. It deals with great principles, announces great 
principles. It is not a mere maxim of economy or 
prosperity in this world, or of guidance for this life, 
which indeed it does not touch, but springs at once 
beyond it, and reveals the rule and nature of an 
eternal existence. The idea of a future endless life 
of happiness or misery underlies this utterance, and 
bears it up, as the earth bears up its mountain ridges, 
and the sea its waves. There could never have been 



272 CONTINUED WICKEDNESS, 

this mighty utterance, were it not for that idea, and 
not as an idea merely, but belief, deep, vast, authori- 
tative. Out of no economical calculations, or pro- 
cesses, or rules, of the wisdom of this world merely, 
could this flash of light have sprung, irradiating the 
eternal world, but out of the intelligence of a well- 
known and acknowledged revelation. 

This is an important consideration. When great 
principles pass into proverbs, it is proof that the 
universal heart is filled with them ; when a great 
meaning is condensed into a proverbial expression, 
and conveyed in it, as one of the intellectual and 
moral coins of society, it is manifest that there is a 
general understanding of it ; that it appeals to deep 
and well-known convictions in the soul, and is, 
indeed, a record of such convictions. Such con- 
densed and universal utterances are like the spark 
that has run through a succession of electric batteries, 
gathering strength in them all, and at length dis- 
charging itself with irresistible energy. And this 
great proverb is just such a discharge of truth, just 
the accumulating lightning of truth, deep- working 
in the soul, established by the attributes and laws 
of Jehovah, expressive of the eternal reality of 
things, and exploding in an utterance for all man- 
kind, in all places, in all ages. 

The doctrine enunciated is as clear as the day. 
Its significance and application rush instant into 
eternity. It does not stop ; cannot be restricted to a 
temporal existence, to the fears of a retribution, or 
the expectations of a reward, this side the grave ; or 
to any effects, either hoped or dreaded, in this world, 



AN ENDLESS DEATH. 273 

from any earthly agencies, principles, or combina- 
tions of circumstances or events. It has nothing to 
do with this life, except as bringing in the powers 
of another life to act upon this. It takes a plunge 
with the soul at once into eternity. It is a flight 
beyond the grave into the realities of a retributive 
existence after death ; and there is no other meaning 
that can be given to it, no other light in which it 
can possibly be taken, no other sense in which any 
sane mind can contrive to understand it. 

The wicked shall he driven away in his wickedness. 
If the proverb had stopped there, if there were no 
other clause following it, and belonging to it, with a 
clearer elucidation of its meaning, a clenching of its 
argument beyond the grave, then the company of 
sceptical, self-blinded critics, in their desire to blind 
others, handling the word of God deceitfully, might 
have said that it simply means that the wicked shall 
be expelled from court, shall have no employment 
or honor from the King, shall find no entertainment 
or support in His presence, or by His officers, or in 
His dominions. Some such critics have contended, 
(and immense learning in such a case may be blinder 
than ignorance, as one may see by looking into 
Hengstenberg), that when David, in the seventeenth 
Psalm, said that he should be satisfied when he 
should awake in God's likeness, it meant simply and 
merely that David intended to awake early enough 
to be up in season for morning prayers ! 

And the same critics might have contended con- 
cerning the first clause of this proverb, that it mere- 
ly means a temporary fine with a banishment or 

12* 



274 CONTINUED WICKEDNESS, 

transportation of some few years to some Oriental 
Botany Bay; intimates just a residence for some 
year or two in the Bridewell of Judea, but after- 
wards a reformation and restoration to favor. But 
the succeeding phrase puts a stopper upon all this, 
and so establishes the scope of the passage, that 
there is no denying or evading it : " The wicked 
shall be driven away in his wickedness; but the 
righteous hath hope in his death." The passage has 
precisely the same sphere of application for the 
wicked, that it has for the righteous ; and if an im- 
mortality of existence is referred to for the righteous, 
so it is for the wicked. That it is such a future ex- 
istence for the righteous which is here signified, and 
nothing earthly, nothing limited to this world, is 
absolutely demonstrated by the only quality pre- 
dicated of the righteous, or as belonging to him, 
being that of hope in his death, that is, hope of 
something after death, the hope of a life of happi- 
ness in holiness beyond the grave. But right the 
reverse is predicated of the wicked ; and the words 
driven away, in the first clause, answer precisely to 
the word death in the last clause. 

And the little particle hut is of amazing force in 
the connection of the two affirmations. The wicked 
dieth in his wickedness, and therefore without hope ; 
but the righteous hath hope in his death. It is as 
certainly the lot and sphere of the wicked after 
death here referred to, as it is the lot and sphere of 
the righteous after death. Moreover, the language 
in reference to the wicked has a prolonged scorpion 
power, a demonstration of continued existence in 



AN ENDLESS DEATH. 275 

misery, which, might have been sophistically evaded, 
or at least the way might have been more open for 
attempted escape from its evident meaning, if mere- 
ly the word death had been used in the first clanse ; 
if merely it had been said that the wicked shall 
disappear out of existence ; but it is said that the 
wicked shall not merely cease to exist, but shall be 
driven away in his wickedness, shall continue in his 
wickedness, thus driven away. The form of ex- 
pression is strikingly similar to that in Job concern- 
ing the wicked : " He shall be driven from light 
into darkness, and chased out of the world." 

It is beyond all question the lot and sphere of the 
wicked after death referred to in this proverb. 
There is no possibility, by any twisting, or screw- 
ing, or distortion, or blinding, or critical perver- 
sion, of getting any other meaning out of it. In- 
terrogate it how you please, with whatever cross- 
examination, or brow-beating of the witnesses, or 
sophistical torture of the testimony, you can make 
it speak only this thing ; that in his death, and after 
death, the wicked man still lives, and that he not 
only still lives, but is driven away in his wickedness, 
which secures and renders inevitable his misery. 
In opposition to the hope of the righteous in his 
death, the wickedness of the wicked constitutes 
hopelessness in his ; nay, it is the certainty of per- 
dition, it is absolute despair. 

The whole proverb is just precisely a counterpart 
of that passage in the New Testament, " The wages 
of sin is death ; but the gift of God is eternal life, 
through Jesus Christ our Lord." One paragraph of 



276 CONTINUED WICKEDNESS, 

the verse is just a demonstration of the other. 
The New Testament passage possesses a somewhat 
greater explicitness, and in the mention of Jesus 
Christ, a new revelation; it is the Old Testament 
passage transfigured, as the Old Testament person- 
ages and morals frequently are transfigured and 
illustrated in the New. But the doctrine of both 
passages is the same, incontrovertibly, and in both 
equally explicit and indisputable. 

Now, to show to what an extent infidelity can go, 
and how far its suspicious, doubting, blinding spirit 
and taint can cover even in some cases, or for a 
little season, a profoundly Christian mind with 
stupidity and darkness, leaving it with almost only 
the ability to grope, we only need recur to the 
assertion confidently put forth, and in the middle of 
the last century maintained even by an English 
theologian, that the doctrine of future rewards and 
punishments was nowhere revealed by Moses, and 
very slightly revealed, if at all, in any part of the 
Old Testament. How such a mind could confront 
the overwhelming declaration of our blessed Lord, 
that if men hear not Moses and the Prophets in re- 
gard to the future life of rewards and punishments, 
neither will they be persuaded, though one rose 
from the dead ; or whether such a man ever could 
have studied the New Testament with sufficient 
care and candor to have noticed that overwhelming 
declaration, is doubtful. But the added and irre- 
sistible light of the New Testament is not by any 
means needed to overthrow such scepticism. This 
very passage from the Book of Proverbs is a perfect 



AN ENDLESS DEATH. 277 

stumbling-block, and gives the lie to any such 
assertion as that of the absence of the teaching of a 
future retribution in the pages of the Old Testament. 
What can be made of this passage, if this great 
doctrine is not in it ? How could any but an idiot, 
any man that can put two sentences together, per- 
ceive the connection between them, and reason 
from the one to the other, see anything else in this 
passage, any other meaning in it, but just this of an 
unending retribution beyond the grave ? What 
other significance can even be imagined for it? 
There is nothing in it, if that meaning be not there ; 
it is absurd unintelligible jargon otherwise. 

And what, in the face of such a clear indisputable 
announcement, recorded as a proverb of the nation, 
and passed into circulation as one of the established 
coins of its habitual admitted thought, and acknowl- 
edged genuine truth, would we say of the impudent 
assertion that a people that had such central, out- 
shining truth as this, for their daily currency of in- 
tellect and heart, knew nothing of the doctrine of 
immortality, and were never influenced by the ex- 
pectation of future rewards and punishments, nor 
were ever dealt with by Jehovah on such grounds ? 

Let us suppose that we heard the proverb uttered 
in English, or had met with it in a book, penny wise 
and pound foolish, and that some sage critic should 
tell us that the people among whom this proverb 
originated, and where it was in vogue, knew neither 
the meaning of penny nor pound, nor ever had any 
coined money in circulation, nor ever transacted 
any of their business through any such medium 



278 CONTINUED WICKEDNESS, 

what would we say of such an impudent fool ? Sup- 
pose, to make the two cases more similar, that two 
thousand years hence a book of our English litera- 
ture should be found, with just this proverb in it, 
penny wise, and pound foolish, along with others 
of like tenor, such as time is money, or, a 'penny 
saved is a penny earned, or, take care of the shillings, 
and the pounds will take care of themselves ; and 
suppose that some sagacious German critics of those 
days should undertake, in the face of such proverbs 
and declarations, to affirm and maintain that neither 
the English nor the American nation knew either 
the nature of gold or silver, or ever had any of those 
precious metals in their possession, or ever carried 
on any of their commercial affairs of trading busi- 
ness with pieces of stamped money of known and 
determined value. Would any credit be attached 
to any such speculations ? Would not men stamp 
the critic's own mind as that of a blinded, credulous, 
unbelieving fool, or rather would not such a critic 
be treated, if not avowedly intending a hoax, as a 
perfect lunatic in literature ? 

Yet just this is the boasted wisdom with which 
some learned critics have put their confounding 
eye glasses to the Bible. Just with this stupidity, 
just with this mixture of credulity and unbelief, 
have men come to the consideration of some of the 
most explicitly and undeniably revealed truths in 
Grod's word. Just thus impudently have they de- 
nied the plain and inevitable meaning on many a 
passage, and with the same stolidity have closed 
their eyes, their minds, their hearts, against doc- 



AN ENDLESS DEATH. 279 

trines revealed in such unmistakable fulness and 
power, that the wayfaring man, though a fool, need 
not err in regard to them. In such cases God at 
length does not unfrequently give the man over to 
strong delusion to believe a lie. And such cases 
realize the declaration in Isaiah, "He feedeth on 
ashes ; a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that 
he cannot deliver his soul, nor say is there not a lie 
in my right hand ?" And the words of the prophet 
Jeremiah receive a new * fulfilment, " The wise men 
are ashamed, they are dismayed and taken ; lo, 
they have rejected the word of the Lord, and what 
wisdom is in them ? Every man is brutish in his 
knowledge, and the spiritual man is mad." 

And furthermore, we see the reason of such lying 
criticisms, so profoundly, palpably false, and cover- 
ing the plainest book in the world with such Egyp- 
tian darkness. It is because of the threatening and 
repulsive nature of such announcements to men that 
will indulge their sins, and still hope for heaven. 
It is because such principles as those announced in 
regard to God's dealing with the righteous and the 
wicked, and revealed in such passages as this ex- 
plicit proverb, cover the whole ground of an eternal re- 
tribution. They arraign man as guilty before God, 
and accuse and condemn the sinner as deserving of 
nothing less than hopeless, and therefore everlasting 
banishment from God's presence, and an immutable 
confinement and permanence of nature in that 
wickedness which he has chosen. 

If a man chooses to live in it, in it he will die ; 
and if he chooses to die in it, (and at his own choice 



280 CONTINUED WICKEDNESS, 

it is whether to die in it or be redeemed from it,) — 
if he chooses to die in it, in it he will be driven 
away ; and no matter where, if he be still the same. 
It might be a province in the precincts of heaven ; 
but if he carries that wicked nature with him, in 
which he is driven away, everywhere in the uni- 
verse it would be misery. No outward change 
could be a change within. 

Now, in this view, this Proverb is just exactly 
counterparted by our blessed Lord, when he says, 
"If ye believe not that I am He, your predicted 
and appointed Messiah and Saviour, ye shall die in 
your sins." The manner of this announcement by 
the Lord Jesus presents this perdition of dying in 
your sins as the climax of horror, beyond which no 
imagery nor reality could go. It is the announce- 
ment of an eternal destruction. But as from the 
Lord of life and glory comes this new announce- 
ment of the terror and certainty of everlasting 
death, so from him, and him only, comes the offer 
and assurance of a possible deliverance, the promise 
of an everlasting redemption to any and every man, 
whosoever he may be, that will sincerely trust in 
him. Such an one shall not die in his wickedness, 
but shall be redeemed from it, shall be released from 
its bondage, purified from its defilement, delivered 
from its condemnation, and set free from its power. 
Sin and death shall have no more dominion over 
him, but even now, the very moment of the begin- 
ning of his faith, he shall begin to live an inde- 
structible eternal life. Believing in Christ, he hath 
passed already from death unto life, and over him 



AN ENDLESS DEATH. 281 

the second death hath no power, and the first death 
is but a release for him into the blissful presence 
and likeness of his Saviour. He hath hope in his 
death, such a hope as fills the whole valley with 
light, such a hope as in Christ Jesus takes away the 
sting of Death, and sings out of the heart, as from 
an organ, the dying anthem, " Death, where is thy 
sting, Oh grave, where is thy victory!" "He that 
belie veth in me," said our Lord Jesus, " though he 
were dead, yet shall he live ; and whosoever liveth 
and believeth in me, shall never die." 

We see, in this Proverb, some of the reasons 
why our blessed Lord affirmed that if the men of 
his day would not hear Moses and the Prophets, 
neither would they be persuaded, though one rose 
from the dead. The light is so clear, the doctrine 
of future rewards and punishments so explicit, that 
there is no escaping from it, except by an insensi- 
bility, blindness, and unbelief, that would remain 
unmoved, even if a man came from the dead to 
bear witness to the secrets of another world. The 
evil is in a sinful heart. 

But we also see, on the comparison of this pas- 
sage with answering passages in the ISTew Testa- 
ment, an example of the climax from one to the 
other, from the lower to the higher, from the dawn 
to the perfect day, from the vestibule to the inner 
temple. This passage in the Old Testament is 
translated, transfigured in the New. In the pres- 
ence of Jesus, it appears as Moses and Elias ap- 
peared, in a new glory, in garments that shine like 
the sun, in the overwhelming power and radiance 



282 CONTINUED WICKEDNESS. 

poured by him upon all truth, and reflected from 
Eternity realized. 

And so again we see our heightened responsi- 
bility and duty. The greater our light, the greater 
our guilt, if we neglect or reject it. The more ad- 
vanced and precious our privileges, the deeper 
and more terrible our ruin, if from them we pass 
to everlasting woe. Nearer in Jesus to the highest 
heavens of glory ; nearer also to the deepest hell, 
by the possibility of a perdition, through neglect 
and rejection of that blessed Saviour, more intoler- 
able than that of Sodom ! 



*aft ait ft ^ffst 



What contrasts, what lights and shades, what 
depths of extreme worlds, what inconceivable ex- 
periences, till experience itself has given the reality, 
in that simple announcement, " Was dead, and is 
alive again, was lost, and is found ! " 

We know but little of death, still less of life ; in 
another sense, we know but little of life, still less of 
death. Something we know of both ; enough on 
the one hand, for some computation of the power 
of an endless life, enough on the other for some 
prophecy or forewarning and assurance of the terri- 
bleness of eternal death. Something we know of 
life, in our experience of physical existence, and the 
exercise of intellectual capacities exceedingly lim- 
ited. But in our native state, untransflgured by 
Divine Grace, not quickened by the Divine Spirit, 
we know nothing of life in its positiveness, its joy- 
ousness, its greatness, its glory. We are sinful ; 
and sinful beings can never know what life is, till 
the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has 
begun to set them free from the law of sin and of 
death. And even then, in this world we know but 
little of life ; it is always life under a veil, life in a 



284 DEAD AND LOST. 

prison, life in a body of death, life imperfectly un- 
derstood, imperfectly developed, manifested often 
mainly in groanings that cannot be uttered, and in 
the earnest expectation of the creature, waiting for 
the manifestation of the Sons of God. What can 
we know, here on earth, of the boundless freedom 
and glory of the life of heaven ? 

But we are quite as ignorant of death, although 
death has passed upon all men, for that all have 
sinned, and this is an article of as universal expe- 
rience as life. Yet because even under this penalty, 
grace has interposed, and our world is suspended 
between life and death, of death positively we know 
almost nothing. Change we know, decay we know, 
the decline and departure of life, the body mould- 
ering in the grave, some of the concomitants and 
circumstances of death ; but death in its reality, 
death positive, death spiritual, death eternal, we 
know little of that, because the ravages of death are 
suspended, and we are held back from the expe- 
rience of it, by the very nature of the system of 
mercy and grace in Christ Jesus. Perhaps we know 
less of death eternal than we do of life eternal ; for 
life eternal is a gift, through Jesus Christ our Lord, 
and the earnest of it is already conferred ; but death 
eternal is only the wages of sin, and the wages are 
not paid till the day of reckoning and of retribution. 

And although in some terrific cases there has 
seemed to be, even on earth, the commencement of 
an experience of the world of woe, yet no living 
man ever had the gates of death and of hell opened 
before him, ever entered into their secrets. A tor- 



DEAD AND LOST. 285 

tured conscience reveals much, in the way of fore- 
warning and prediction ; and the anguish of despair, 
so far as there be despair this side of the grave, 
sometimes almost draws back the parting veil ; but 
still, except by the declarations of the word of God, 
we know almost nothing. By those declarations 
we may know ; but they demand faith, and we must 
take them on God's authority; and if we will not 
believe them, there is nothing in us, or about us, 
that can supply the place of faith, or be to us 
beforehand a realization of the things revealed in 
God's word. The wrath of God itself is revealed 
from heaven against all unrighteousness and ungod- 
liness of men ; but we have nothing as yet in our 
own experience, or in the course of the world, to 
make us know to the full what the wrath of God is, 
what it must be to suffer that wrath in hell. 

The revelation is given, on purpose that we may 
avoid that wrath ; for the wrath is future, and the 
hell is future, and we are commanded to flee from 
it ; and faith in it is requisite, before the experience 
of it, that we may flee from it. If we do not take it 
on God's assurance, and at His command apply to 
Jesus Christ for redemption from it, then we are 
lost ; if we wait for the experience of it before we 
will believe it, then, when the realization of it comes, 
it will be too late for that faith in Jesus which might 
have saved the soul. There will be the eternal 
knowledge of that wrath for those who wait to be 
thus convinced of it, but no longer any possibility 
of fleeing from it ; and therefore that wrath is directly 
pointed against unbelief itself, against that state of 



286 DEAD AND LOST. 

mind which renders a man insensible to God's warn- 
ings, and prevents him from fleeing at once to Christ. 
" He that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but 
the wrath of God abideth on him." 

The most vivid images of scripture, therefore, are 
but faint and inadequate shadowings forth of the 
reality; they demonstrate and unveil it, as far as 
possible, but they require belief. Our blessed Lord 
makes His appeal to our very senses, as far as it can 
be made. He takes the torture which is most terrible 
to us, that from which our sensitive nature shrinks 
back with the greatest horror and repugnance, and 
constructs a world out of it, and carries us into the 
midst of that world, as in the tremendous colloquy 
between Lazarus in heaven and the lost man in 
hell ; so that we see the flames, we hear the wail of 
souls tormented, we observe the anguish of despair. 

But all this is still only an appeal to faith. "We 
have not yet ourselves gone into those torments; 
and this powerful rhetoric of heaven is adopted, that 
we might not; and it is like placing angels with 
drawn swords before the entrance to that world of 
woe — it is like piling crags of burning coal before 
the gates of the prison of God's insufferable wrath — 
that we may not enter. 

But all this requires faith. Perhaps it comes the 
nearest to the demonstration of experience to which 
the Lord God of our salvation could bring it, and 
yet not break down our freedom ; not render faith 
impossible ; not destroy the liberty of will, the possi- 
bility of a voluntary choice ; the nearest to a physical 
and moral compulsion to which God could bring 



DEAD AND LOST. 287 

mere truth, and still leave us free agents, still leave 
it as a matter for ourselves to decide, by our own 
preferences, whether to seek Grod's mercy in Christ 
or not, whether to believe or not. 

The strong representations, the overwhelming 
appeals, the vivid realities of God's word, almost 
force conviction, almost take away the opportunity 
of faith ; and yet they are powerless without faith. 
If a man who never knew what fire was, never had 
experience of the sensation of burning, should stand 
before a pool of molten lava, about to plunge into 
it, what could you do to convince him of the mad- 
ness of such a step, except assure him that it would 
be instant and inevitable destruction ? You might 
thrust his hand into the flame of a candle, or touch 
his bare arm with a live coal, but still, as to the pool 
of lava, he would have to exercise faith ; you could 
go no farther in your demonstration. Anything 
farther is the very thing, the very experience of per- 
dition, from which you would pull him back ; but, 
after all your attempted demonstrations, you can 
give him no adequate idea of what it would be, if he 
should plunge into a sea of burning lava. 

But much greater, of necessity, is the inadequacy 
of all truth, and all mere imagery, to set forth the 
reality of what is coming in the eternal world. It 
goes beyond all our experience, and must have faith. 
If we shall ransack the universe, and combine all 
its agencies and capacities of representation, or of 
appeal to the imagination, we could contrive no de- 
monstration that would answer in the place of ex- 
perience, or obviate the necessity of simple faith in 



288 DEAD AND LOST. 

God. There must be that faith as to what we our- 
selves are, as to our present condition, as well as 
what we are to be ; that faith as to the nature of 
our present ruin, as well as the means of our re- 
demption from it. The combinations of human 
language, and the appeals of resemblance from what 
we do know to what we do not know, make some 
little approximation ; but still, as to experience, we 
know almost nothing. 

Deep calleth unto deep, death bears testimony to 
death, the King of Terrors is God's artist, with his 
pencil dabbled in the grave's corruption, to draw 
our character, and we are said to be dead in tres- 
passes and sins. But the moral death infinitely 
transcends the physical, and passes out of reach, 
beyond all conception, all comparison. For when 
the physical death ends, the moral death begins. 
Nay, the physical death may be said to be the first 
positive symptom or demonstration of the moral 
death, for until the physical death is realized, the 
moral death is suspended, its positive agencies are 
held back from operation. "What we call death is but 
the close of mortal life, and it is only when life ends 
that positive death begins. The passions and facul- 
ties of our being do not, this side the grave, enter 
upon their eternal elemental war. Nor is there 
anything that can adequately shadow forth that 
state, nothing positive, nothing negative; nothing 
but the agony of a wounded conscience ever begins 
to make the soul realize the truth. 

There are tremendous images. The shock of 
furious armies, the crash of falling avalanches, 



DEAD AND LOST. 289 

mountains overwhelming cities, volcanoes in action, 
herds of wild beasts, confined and roaring in the 
dungeons of the Coliseum, making the whole struc- 
ture shake with their bello wings, then all at once let 
loose, and with a fierce conflict of hunger and rage 
grappling with one another ; the elements in wild 
affright and uproar ; earthquakes, conflagrations, 
floods, pestilences, wars ; all these are dire images 
of terror, ruin, desolation, destruction. But all 
these, and even the stars dropping from heaven, as 
when a fig-tree casteth her untimely figs, and the 
whole universe beaten together in chaos, or shrivel- 
ling as a parched scroll ; all these come short of any 
representation of an eternal death ; they all fail, 
they are mere transitory syllables. The moral death 
is unapproachable by any such representation. And 
so is the greatness of the moral life, and the glory 
of a moral regeneration. 

For if we were to see all these things in perfec- 
tion, all these events and images of death and chaos, 
in utmost perfection, and then witness an instantane- 
ous restoration from death to life, from destruction to 
reorganization, from rage to serenity, from desola- 
tion to peace, from chaos and ruin to order and 
beauty, from pain and misery to comfort and hap- 
piness ; all this would go but a little way towards 
symbolizing the change from spiritual death to 
spiritual life, from sin to holiness, from hell to 
heaven. If we were to behold a decaying human 
body suddenly rise out of the coffin in all the beauty 
and freshness of youthful life and health, it would 
be a change of solemn, overwhelming, supernatural 

13 



290 DEAD AND LOST. 

power and glory. If we should behold a marble 
statue, as we gaze upon it, walk living from its 
pedestal, endued suddenly with the powers of vital- 
ity and motion, it would be a wondrous, overpower- 
ing miracle. Could we have stood by the grave of 
Lazarus, and seen the dead man, the decay of whose 
body in the tomb had already commenced, come 
forth at the word of the Lord of life and glory, 
bound hand and foot with his grave-clothes, that 
had been a most stupendous spectacle. But all this 
is nothing to the contrast between a dead soul and 
a living soul, dead or living forever and ever. 

A dead tree is a striking object, a gigantic, dead, 
withered oak, or sycamore, or maple, for example, 
dry, leafless, blasted, amidst a living forest ; and if 
we should see such a tree instantaneously clothed 
with verdure while we are looking at it ; or still 
more, if with gradual but rapid progress we should 
see the buds start and open into leaves, and new 
sprigs shoot forth fresh and waving ; such a change 
and innovation would be an amazing phenomenon. 
The winter of our world is a solemn season, and the 
resurrection of all nature in the spring is a miracle 
of such unlimited power and exquisite beauty, that 
the scene arrests, with vast influence, every reflect- 
ing mind. But all these illustrations are deficient, 
incapable; and neither the death nor the life of 
nature is any adequate exponent of the death or the 
life of the soul. 

If now, quitting all these images, we should take 
a man like John Newton, and follow him closely, 
with a perception of his qualities and character like 



DEAD AND LOST. 291 

that of Omniscience ; if we could bring a vivid per- 
fect view of the man in his early, increasing, and 
uttermost depravity, and contrast it with an equally 
vivid and perfect view of the man in his greatest 
purity and most exalted life, that would be something. 
But in such contrast it is only the faint beginning 
on both sides, the dark and the bright, that we see ; 
it is only as the evening or the morning twilight. ; 
the one verging to a darkness and a death, that if 
it went on to its perfection, would be the blackness 
of darkness forever; the other but the dawning of 
life, which is to open into perfect day only in the 
world of heavenly glory. 

We can have no absolute realization beforehand, 
either of the heaven or hell of character carried to 
its extreme, and perfected in good or evil. The 
anguish of a wounded conscience, a sense of the 
burden of unpardoned sin, as we have already inti- 
mated, does something in the way of personal ex- 
perience. And if men would look into their hearts 
and lives, more frequently than they do, and com- 
pare them with the holiness of Grod and the require- 
ments of the Divine Law, they would have knowl- 
edge and experience enough of death and hell to 
drive them to most earnest and unceasing prayer 
for God's mercy. There is proof enough, demonstra- 
tion enough, imagery enough, and vivid and pow- 
erful to the uttermost possible degree, and yet fall- 
ing immeasurably short of the reality. 

Neither is there anything in that other image, lost 
and found, that by any illustration can reach and 
expound the infinitude of an eternal ruin and salva- 



292 DEAD AND LOST. 

tion. It can only shadow it forth dimly, darkly, 
but profoundly ; for that word lost, applied to the 
soul, is perhaps the most tremendously expressive 
word in our language ; and in every man's own 
thoughts it distances instantly all possibility of 
approximation by images or illustrations of things 
lost here ; and the very use of. such illustrations is 
not so much to convey any new revelation, or open 
up any deeper depth of meaning, or more absolute 
realization of infinitude, but rather to set the mind 
more vividly at work, to quicken the play of its 
activity, to inspire and energize its sluggish imagin- 
ation, to carry it brooding over the deeps of hell. 
And when the mind becomes thus active and heated 
on the subject, the word itself, when the ideas of 
heaven, hell, eternity, are quickened from their 
slumbers, will do more than all possible illustrations. 
And, indeed, such illustrations can be only and 
remotely relative. For there is nothing in all the 
universe that ever can be actually and absolutely 
lost, except the soul. God knows where every lost 
thing is, and can lay his hand upon it in an instant. 
And although things may be withdrawn from the 
sight and hidden from the knowledge both of angels 
and of men, for a season, by and by they may come 
into view again, and God could bring them into view 
in a moment. The constellations that have vanished 
from the sky, God knows where they are, and what 
use to make of them. The lost knowledges too, 
in men's minds, can be revived. The sciences and 
arts, that have gone out of existence, are as abso- 
lutely true and possible as ever. The lost manu- 



DEAD AND LOST. 293 

scripts, and burned libraries and parchments, could 
all be restored at a motion from the Almighty. The 
lost tribes could be discovered, the lost navigators 
disentombed, the lost ships brought up from the 
bosom of the deep. Every missing coin of gold or 
silver is somewhere still, and though rust-eaten, or 
gone back to its original elements, could be pro- 
duced. Everything mislaid may have its place 
again and its use again. Nothing is really lost, that 
is not lost by sin. But a lost soul is lost even 
to God. 

Nothing is lost that is lovingly known to God. 
A holy angel might be lost for a season, in our 
common sense of the word, wandering among the 
worlds of God, might lose his own way in the 
wilderness of God's infinitude of glory in this 
universe, as a little child is lost in a pathless forest ; 
but he would be sure to find his way back again ; 
and even the sense of such bewilderment would be 
no trouble or anxiety to him, for he could not go 
where God is not, and though he should be wander- 
ing a thousand years, they would be wanderings of 
bliss and glory. But a lost soul is lost from God, 
from heaven, from the universe, from all good, from 
all blessedness, in all evil, in all woe. A lost soul 
is lost by sin, by corruption, by enmity against God. 
A lost soul is good for nothing, and fit only to be 
burned, fit only to show the infinite misery of sin. 

Oh, who can tell, who nere can imagine the 
infinite horror in that word hst, applied to the 
ruined soul, the soul forever dead and lost in sin ! 
And who is there that can be willing to hazard such 



294 DEAD AND LOST. 

loss, such ruin ? If not, then hasten to the cross of 
Christ, for as in the sufferings and death of the Ee- 
deemer you have the greatest possible demonstra- 
tion beforehand of the value of the soul, and the 
infinite wretchedness of its ruin, so in the mercy of 
that Kedeemer you have the only possible deliver- 
ance and refuge from the wrath to come. In His 
grace, His willing grace, freely offered to all ; His 
dying grace, dying to make it possible ; His sanctify- 
ing grace, ready to renew and save the soul; in 
Him, His love, His grace, is our only possible re- 
demption. And oh, to be found in Christ I 






Cftf ^rpmeitt of %m% torn 
Saltate. 

The very casual droppings from the honey-combs 
of Divine mercy and truth in God's Word are full 
of infinite principle and argument. Take, for ex- 
ample, that declaration from the heart of Divine 
love, on occasion of the conversion of Zaccheus, in 
Luke 19 : 10. " For the Son of Man is come to seek 
and to save that which was lost." 

There are in this passage three distinct and grand 
elements of thought, bearing upon one another, 
balancing one another, elucidating one another. 
They are as the quantities in an algebraic equation ; 
given, the one, the other is determinate, is certain. 
They are attributes and relations of personal and 
moral infinitude, and the connection between them, 
and the conclusions among them, are profound and 
mighty. So infinite indeed is the passage in its 
reach and application, that these three questions, 
Who it is that came ? how He came ? and for what 
He came? contained in it, constitute a volume of 
theology embracing heaven, earth and hell. When 
we proceed to investigate these points, we find a 
power and profoundness of connection and con- 



296 THE ARGUMENT OF RUIN, 

elusion among them, so close and inevitable, that the 
strongest mathematical demonstration conld not be 
more irresistible ; a logic and a sweep of internal 
mutual evidence and significance, so vast and 
majestic, that when we begin thoroughly to com- 
prehend it, the mind is overwhelmed by it. Sim- 
ple as are its terms, the compass and sublimity of 
the passage, in the investigation, Who it is that 
came, how He came, and for what He came, are 
past measurement, past utterance. 

There is a grand reciprocal argument between 
the dignity and glory of a Divine Saviour, and the 
character and ruin of the lost, whom he came to 
save. The one reveals, illustrates, determines, the 
other. Especially is this the case, in reference to 
the guilt and misery of the creature. We must 
look first at the great blaze of light in this direc- 
tion, produced by the determination of the question, 
Who is it that came, and the manner of his com- 
ing. We are not left to the least uncertainty or 
doubt in regard to it. The Son of man is the 
Creator and Lord of the universe, by whom and for 
whom all beings and things have their existence. 
He is the Word, the Being, who was in the begin- 
ning with God, and who was God. In his original 
glory being in the form of God, and on an equality 
with God, he nevertheless took upon him the form 
of a servant, and became obedient unto death, even 
the death of the Cross. In this humiliation, suffer- 
ing, and death, he became an offering for sin, set 
forth of God as a propitiation, a sacrifice, through 
the Eternal Spirit, by his own blood, for the obtain- 



FEOM SALVATION. 297 

ing of an eternal redemption, that God might be 
just, and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus. 
For this purpose the Eternal Word was made flesh, 
and dwelt among us, with all the fulness of the 
God-head bodily, God manifest in the flesh, justified 
in the spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gen- 
tiles, believed on in the world, received up into 
glory. By virtue of his own possession and mani- 
festation of supreme Deity, he became an eternal 
and unchangeable High Priest and Saviour, not after 
the law of a carnal commandment, but the power 
of an endless life, having offered up himself once 
for all, a sacrifice, whose efficacy is to all eternity, 
for deliverance from eternal death, and the gift of 
an inheritance in life everlasting. Even such a Di- 
vine Almighty Saviour was necessary, that he 
might be able to save to the uttermost all that come 
unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make in- 
tercession for them. Such is the being who came, 
and such the manner of his coming, to seek and to 
save that which was lost. 

"What, then, is the measure and peculiarity of sig- 
nificance, the exceeding and eternal weight of mean- 
ing, accumulated, by such a preparation, upon that 
word lost ? What is the conclusion forced upon it, 
and what the definition wrung out, or the impossi- 
bility of definition, because it is found to be illimit- 
able and immeasurable, in the same way as eternity 
itself is unsearchable, and yet known, absolute, un- 
questionable ? From the previous terms of the 
equation given, you are flung into an infinitude of 
disclosure, a boundless abyss of undeniable, yet 

13* 



298 THE ARGUMENT OF RUIN, 

tremendous truth, the last, and the most terrible, 
that the mind can know or be employed upon. 
What is this light, this sudden blaze far round 
illuminating hell, this penetrating revelation of the 
unseen and the eternal, by the person and the cross 
of Christ ? What light does the announcement of 
God manifest in the flesh for human salvation, the 
Word made flesh, and suffering, dying, throw upon 
the character and condition of the lost ? How lost, 
in what manner, in what nature, to what extent, to 
necessitate, or justify, such an interposition? 

For, if there is a necessity of justification for 
God's pardoning the guilty, there is also a necessity 
of justification for God's offering up his own Son. 
How could he do it, without an infinite and eternal 
reason ? How could he do it for any expediency 
or necessity short of infinitude ? How could he do 
it, but under the sanction, which indeed he has re- 
vealed to us, of the power of an endless life, for 
guilty creatures, on the one hand, if redeemed, and 
the power of an endless death, inevitable, on the 
other hand, if not redeemed ? 

The redemption is in Christ Jesus, whom God 
hath set forth, a propitiation through faith in His 
blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission 
of sins. The infinite God declares the necessity of 
such a sacrifice for such a justification. Now, then, 
we may turn the equation ; we are compelled to do 
it. If God hath set forth Christ crucified, the Son 
of God incarnate, suffering, dying, that God might 
be just, and the Justifier of him that believeth, and 
the Eedeemer of the soul from an eternity of sin and 



FROM SALVATION. 299 

misery, then also, at the other end, there must be 
set forth such an eternity, such an infinite reality of 
guilt, of death, of ruin, to justify the offering up of 
the Son of God as a sacrifice ; a reality having in it 
the weight of eternity, and deciding at once for the 
universe — not as a dream, not as a pageant, not as 
a transitory show' — -the infinite necessity and justice 
of the measure, for the purposes of infinite love, as 
a measure in the highest degree worthy of Jehovah, 
and illustrating the infinite glory of His attributes. 
God can do nothing inconsistent with those attri- 
butes ; and behind such a sacrifice as that of Christ, 
the Son of God, there must be the sanctions of eter- 
nity ; and we are justified in saying that there must 
be, because God has declared to us that there are. 

This word lost, then, has a meaning never possessed 
by any significance that we give it in regard to any 
interest in time, or anything limited or transitory, 
missing by us, or separated from us. The lost whom 
Christ came to seek and to save are not entities or 
intelligences, mislaid merely, and sure to be found 
again, and restored uninjured as before ; they are 
not merely wandering about bewildered, as a lost 
child in the wilderness, or as one that has mistaken 
his way. Not for that would the Son of God come 
down from heaven — not for that was any such in- 
terposition necessary as that of Christ upon the cross. 
This word came embraces the whole transaction of 
redemption, the incarnate Son of God suffering and 
dying. But not to find mislaid souls, or to guide 
mistaken ones merely, was that sacrifice demanded. 
An angel could have done that — a being of limited 



300 THE ARGUMENT OF RUIN, 

knowledge could have done that, could have ran- 
sacked the globe,' yea, the universe, for everything 
lost, and found it ; could have found it, and brought 
it back to God. Indeed, there is nothing really lost, 
in that sense. God knows where everything is 
hidden, is wandering, is mislaid, and can in a moment 
bring it to light, if He pleases. There is no sacrifice 
upon the cross needed for that. 

Infinitely different from anything like this, is the 
loss of lost souls. It was a loss, in the manner and 
the nature of it, from which no created being or 
power could recover the sinner. It was a moral 
loss, a spiritual loss, a loss of immortality, a loss for- 
ever. It was a death in trespasses and sins, and 
therefore an eternal death. It was an alienation 
from the life of God, and enmity against him, and a 
penalty and power of endless duration, under the 
law of sin and of death in the soul, and of retribu- 
tive wrath upon it. It was a death, and a ruin, and 
a loss, by the terms of the law, The soul that sinneth, 
it shall die, and by the terms of the gospel, He that 
believeth not the son shall not see life, but the wrath 
of God abideth on him. 

And being such a loss, it was eternal. Nothing 
but such a loss could be eternal, and such a loss 
could be no other than eternal. It was not a loss 
of time, not a loss for any limited period of dura- 
tion ; for that would have brought its own cure, its 
own redemption. The end would have come, and 
the restoration. The finding again, and the re- 
covery, at the close of the fated period, of whatever 
length it might be, would be as certain as the loss. 



FROM SALVATION. 301 

Nothing could be said to be lost, in that sense, 
which merely had its period to run, and then would 
come back into heaven again, by as known and im- 
mutable a necessity and certainty, as it ever went 
out. There would be no need of a Saviour for that. 
It would be indeed a work of supererogation to set 
up an atonement by the sufferings of the Son of 
Glod for the recovery of a guilty race, which, left to 
itself, would assuredly and inevitably work out a 
salvation for itself by its own suffering. 

The essence of salvation by mercy is, that it could 
have been had in no other way ; and that certainty 
alone secures its being a spiritual, abiding, eternal 
salvation. A salvation indeed could not be infinite- 
ly prized, which could have been possible in any 
other way. What security would there be against 
the spirit of pride, ingratitude, and rebellion, even 
in heaven, if it could be ever said in answer to the 
claim of supreme allegiance and everlasting grati- 
tude, " What do we owe to you ? We should have 
been saved at any rate, and by our own suffering." 
And. who can imagine the result, which yet would 
be inevitable, when the time of ruin, suffering, and 
loss, on the part of those not saved, should have been 
lapsed away, served out, and the banished, punished 
crew of rebels and of unbelievers should return from 
their transportation in hell, literally saved so as by 
fire, with the scars of the thunder of divine retri- 
bution upon them, to take their place in heaven, 
singing the glory of their own personal sufferings, 
side by side with the company of the redeemed, 
amidst anthems to the Lamb that was slain ! In 



302 THE ARGUMENT OF RUIN, 

very truth, the idea of salvation at all is inconsistent 
with the idea of any temporary or limited perdition. 
If the lost are saved, it is because they were lost for- 
ever. If they were not lost forever, they were not 
lost at all, but were only taking one necessary step 
to everlasting blessedness. 

Furthermore, if the loss were not a loss eternal, 
were not known to be such, the power of habit in 
sin is so despotic, so irresistible, the preference of 
sin instead of holiness in depraved natures is so om- 
nipotent, that a sinful man would say, " Eather than 
have all this labor of salvation, rather than encoun- 
ter all this self-denial and renunciation of sin and 
its enjoyments, I will let the ruin take its own 
course ; the disease shall be in its own Saviour ; 
since it is not forever ; and I will even try the ex- 
periment of the appointed ages in the purgatory of 
hell-fire. They will come to an end, and all will 
be well at last, and I shall be saved at any rate." 
Proclaim such a theology, and let the result show 
how many creatures of sinful nature and habit its 
indefatigable preachers will ever succeed in turning 
from their iniquities. ISTo man will renounce his 
sins, who, by continuance in them, is sure at last of 
entering heaven. 

Neither, again, can this word "lost" mean annihi- 
lation, the extinction of being, the cessation, for- 
ever, of thought and feeling. There can be no 
punishment in that, nor retribution, nor wrath 
abiding, nor wages paid, nor second death, nor any- 
thing, indeed, that needs a Saviour. A new race of 
souls could be created, that should amply supply 



FEOM SALVATION. 303 

the place of those dropped from existence, without 
any atoning sacrifice, or any diminution of the hap- 
piness of the universe. God could as easily create 
new souls, as he could new worlds, without any in- 
terposition of a Saviour. 

Nor was it any bare negation, or form of nega- 
tion, but a positive, absolute perdition, of which no 
words can convey any adequate sense or measure ; 
a perdition without end, and a loss therefore of souls 
in sin and death eternal. It was a loss of immortal 
beings, from the purity and enjoyment of heaven, to 
the guilt and misery' of an endless hell. It was the 
loss of lost souls, in a perpetual death of enmity 
against God, and in the consequent inevitable en- 
durance of everlasting punishment. That presents 
a case, worthy indeed of the interposition of the 
Saviour ; for salvation of a world from such ruin, 
the Son of God might justly die, and the Father's 
infinite love might justly be exercised, even at such 
an expense. And it is declared that the Lord Jesus 
came to save his people from their sins, to seek and 
to save the lost in sin, the lost eternally. 

This is the very argument of the Apostle, and it 
is irresistible. Because we thus judge, that if one 
died for all, then were all dead ; dead in sin, in a 
death that kills beyond the tomb, in a death that is 
undying, a mortality that is immortal, a death in 
trespasses and sins, of which the habit itself, and 
the nature, is death, and the penalty everlasting 
punishment. This indeed is a ruin and a misery, 
demanding the interposition of an Almighty Sa- 
viour, and justifying God in such a sacrifice. Thus 



804 THE ARGUMENT OP RUIN, 

it is that God has interposed. " Unto you first, God, 
Laving raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to bless 
you, in turning away every one of you from his in- 
iquities. This is a faithful saying, and worthy of 
all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the 
world to save sinners. He shall save his people 
from their sins." 

He only can save them, and in God's appointed 
way. There is no other name. If ye believe not in 
Him, ye shall die in your sins. We must be 
saved from sin, or we have no salvation, even in 
Christ. Whomsoever Christ does not save, that soul 
is lost in sin forever ; and such a loss of the soul is 
a calamity, in comparison with which, it were better 
for a man that he had never been born. What 
shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and 
lose his own soul ? Or what shall a man give in 
exchange for his soul? Christ came to save, be- 
cause, if not saved by Him, the ruin of the soul 
would never end. Had it not been so, Christ would 
never have come, but would have let the ages roll 
on, and produce their fruit, and bring at length 
their promised and inevitable renovation. But the 
demonstration of eternal death, from the offer of 
eternal life through Christ, is unquestionable. 

In this view, the coming of Christ, and the offer 
of salvation through Him, is a most awakening and 
alarming advent and interposition. Though an in- 
terposition of infinite mercy and love, yet is it as a 
burst of thunder on the sleeping careless soul, and 
as a glare of lightning in midnight, disclosing both 
our guilt and danger. It startles the soul from its 



FROM SALVATION". 805 

false security with, that impressive question pressed 
by the Apostle Paul, "How shall we escape, if 
we neglect so great salvation ?" 

On the one side there is manifested by this light 
the greatness and dreadfulness of our ruin, on the 
other, the greatness and glory of our redemption ; 
both are measured by the character and the cross of 
Christ. We learn, on the one side, the profoundness 
and terribleness of our despair, native, eternal, if left 
to ourselves ; on the other, the mightiness and all- 
sumciency of our hope in Christ. Without Christ, the 
depths of our despair are unfathomable and eternal. 
But in Christ, if the soul flies to Him, the greater the 
guilt, the greater the hope, by the very appointed 
argument of supplication, " For Thy name's sake, 
pardon mine iniquity, for it is great." God loves to 
show His power and glory in such a salvation, — the 
power of an endless life from the power of an end- 
less death,' — a translation all the way from hell to 
heaven. It is beyond all possibility of question, 
that having given His Son to die for us, God is 
ready to save us, desires to save us. We are in a 
desperate condition ; but if we only feel it, and lay 
hold on Christ, then, the more desperate, the more 
hopeful, and the deeper our despair, the stronger 
our encouragement. Because, Christ came not to 
call the righteous, but sinners to repentance, and the 
greatest sinner first, as the most needy, and the 
chosen object of mercy. So did he choose Paul as 
a pattern. 

And we see clearly that Paul was in the right, 
when he counted all things as worthless, if he 



9 



06 THE ARGUMENT OF RUIN, 



might be found in Christ. Paul, as lost in sin, 
made it the aim of his whole existence to be found 
in Christ, and what else, personally, should be the 
perpetual business of our existence ? We are lost, 
whom He came to seek and to save. Has He found 
us? Is He carrying us home rejoicing? Are we 
folded in His arms, as the careful loving shepherd 
of our souls ? Are we found of Christ ? All the 
lost souls ever found will be found in Him. When 
God searches for souls saved, He will look nowhere 
but in Christ. If you are not in Him, no matter 
where or what you are, or may have been, you are 
lost. Even God cannot find you, out of Christ; 
even God will overlook you, out of Christ. No 
matter if your name were in all the church records 
upon earth; no matter if you died receiving ten 
thousand sacraments ; if you are not in Christ, by 
a living faith, God cannot find you ; you are lost. 

Yet now the Saviour himself is seeking for you 
to save you. Suppose you were a wounded wan- 
dering sheep upon the mountains, lying helpless, 
almost insensible ; yet if you neard the voice and 
footstep of the shepherd, seeking you, you would, 
even by moanings and bleatings inarticulate, show 
him where you are. When the blind men sat by 
the way -side, and Jesus passed by, they no sooner 
heard that he was near, than they cried out, with so 
great an outcry, that the angry bystanders told them 
to keep their peace. But what cared they for the 
bystanders, so they could only be found of Christ ? 
Oh, that weary, worn, way-side wanderers now would 
use the same diligence for salvation ! The anxious, 



FEOM SALVATION. 307 

loving, compassionate shepherd is on the mountains. 
Come forth, ye wandering, dying, lost, yet heedless 
souls, come forth from your graves, your tombs, 
your darkness, your insensibility, your despair, come 
forth and see your Saviour ! It is night, dark night 
upon the mountains, yet he is there, looking for 
you. Will you give Him no sign that you are there, 
will you make no outcry, that he may snatch you 
from ruin, and carry you home rejoicing ? 



CJf* ^rpmettt tf ^uht, from \\t 



The argument from the lost is connected with 
another, of equal, irresistible power and glory, from 
the state and relations of the found. These are 
somewhat opened in the declaration by our blessed 
Lord, " That joy shall be in heaven over one sinner 
that repenteth; joy in the presence of the angels of 
God, over one sinner that repenteth." 

There is illimitable grandeur in this representa- 
tion. It embraces and illustrates many things, the 
vastest in God's universe ; and is indeed like a flash 
of lightning, or a shaft of steady golden light, from 
one end of the universe to the other. Let us look 
at it first as the representation of an absorbing in- 
terest in heaven, of which we ourselves are the sub- 
jects, but of which we should have known nothing, 
had it not been for this declaration of our Saviour. 
" There is joy in heaven." It is a great fact which 
is here noted, something like the fact that at the 
creation the morning stars sang together, and all the 
sons of God shouted for joy. It is an impulse and 
movement, powerful and simultaneous throughout 
God's holy universe, that is here noted ; for nothing 



THE ARGUMENT OF RUIN. 309 

less than this can be comprehended in the designa- 
tion heaven, so far as place or infinitude are con- 
cerned, and nothing less can be comprehended in 
the term joy applied to the inhabitants of heaven, 
so far as intensity of emotion is concerned. That 
which, amidst the perpetual inconceivable ardors 
and raptures of enjoyment, in the celestial world, 
can arrest attention as a new and sudden impulse of 
joy even in heaven, must be deep, intense, and 
blissful beyond conception. 

Let us consider this. It takes much to move a 
world. An event, indeed, must be of some note to 
move even one large city in a world, so deeply that 
the movement shall be simultaneous and universal. 
"We remember once reading an article in an English 
periodical, saying that there was but one man in the 
kingdom, whose death would really make a sensa- 
tion all over the city of London ; a thousand others 
might die, and all the people in the city would not 
even know it, much less care for it. That one man 
was then the Duke of Wellington. 

And so of events. It must be an astounding 
event indeed that would move a city of fifteen hun- 
dred thousand inhabitants to its centre. But how 
much vaster in magnitude and importance must the 
event be, much to move men's minds simultaneously 
to any great extent all over the world. The fall of 
a mountain in Switzerland, burying a whole village, 
would create no stir at the Antipodes, perhaps would 
not even be noticed. A great battle in India, in- 
volving the loss of thousands of lives, and the fate 
perhaps of empires, is announced without creating 



310 THE ARGUMENT OF RUIN" 



any deep feeling. If the thing be near us, of course 
we feel it more. The burning of a steamer on our 
own waters may affect us more than the second en- 
gulphing of a city like Pompeii in the fiery lava. 
We are affected but little by things at a distance, 
even on the surface of our own native world. 

Carry this principle to other worlds, think of a 
distant planet, and the intelligence that a whole 
globe had gone from the sky, with all its inhabit- 
ants, would produce scarcely any excitement. How 
much less the fate of one individual among many 
millions of inhabitants. Suppose it were proclaimed 
in this world that a creature in the Star Sirius, who 
was under sentence of death, had repented and was 
pardoned. Would it produce the least sensation ? 
Would any notice be taken of it ? Not so much as 
the rise of stocks five per cent., or the sudden re- 
ception of half a million of gold from California, or 
the intelligence of the failure of a great banking- 
house in London. 

Now, apply these facts to the actual relations be- 
tween us and heaven, to the effect of intelligence 
from this world to that, as made known to us. 
Heaven is illimitable ; its inhabitants are innumer- 
able ; its interests and its objects of interest are in- 
finite and transporting. Its transactions are of a 
grandeur and glory, compared with which perhaps 
the building or burning of our whole globe would 
be a minute thing. And yet there is anxiety in 
that world respecting intelligence from this. The 
countless inhabitants of heaven take so absorbing 
and thrilling an interest even in one soul in this 



FEOM THE JOY OF HEAVEN. 311 

world, that when it is told in heaven that here on 
this earth one sinner has repented, there is a sensa- 
tion there ; there is a universal sensation, there is 
joy in Heaven, as over an event of glory, important 
to the whole universe of God. 

There is such an intimate connection and com- 
munion, and such a fervent sympathy, between that 
world and this. And yet that celestial region where 
this sympathy is felt, and where this benevolent 
concern and joy are manifested, may be farther dis- 
tant from us in locality than the farthest point of 
the universe to which the telescope has ever carried 
our vision, or of which any astronomical computa- 
tion has ever rendered our knowledge possible. 
And that glorious celestial region is the place where 
the inhabitants see God ; where there is the personal 
presence and glory of the Saviour ; where there is 
no night, nor any mechanism of a material universe 
needed ; neither sun nor moon, nor hanging worlds 
of flame ; but where the Lord God Almighty and 
the Lamb are the everlasting light and the all -sur- 
rounding temple. Would we have supposed it 
possible for the inhabitants of such a region, in the 
midst of their absorbing and glorious employments 
and enjoyments, to have leisure for a thought upon 
a world like this? And yet, between that incon- 
ceivably exalted and glorious region and this wan- 
dering, distant orb on which we dwell, there is this 
intimacy of sympathetic interest so close and thrill- 
ing ; an interest turning exclusively upon the welfare 
of the soul, and absorbed in the one question of its 



312 THE ARGUMENT OF RUIN, 

repentance — joy in heaven over one sinner that 
repenteth. 

Now, what an amazing difference between the 
interest of heaven towards us, and our destitution 
of interest towards heaven ! — the intense benevolence 
and sympathy in that world, and the intense stupidity 
in this ! There is but one way of accounting for it, 
and that is the great fact revealed in scripture, that 
ours is a fallen world, under a scheme and possibility 
of redemption ; — there is but one way of accounting 
for it, and that is made known in the same passage 
that announces this heavenly joy, as a joy over one 
sinner that repenteth. There is stupidity here, 
and a lack of all right interest towards heaven, be- 
cause this is a world of sinners in rebellion against 
Grod, in whom the very beginning of life, and of the 
manifestation of sympathy with heaven, is in repent- 
ance. And there is this absorbing interest there, for 
the same reason, because this is a world of souls in 
rebellion, and repentance is the redemption of a soul 
from this rebellion and ruin, and the inhabitants of 
heaven are perfectly benevolent. 

They have none of our defect of sensibility. A 
vast interest loses none of its greatness with them 
by distance, and their judgment of things in principle 
does not depend, like ours, upon circumstances. 
They see and know the value of the soul. The ruin 
of the soul in consequence of sin is eternal, and they 
see and know that. "We are this side that demon- 
stration ; they are on the other. We know it by 
faith ; they know it by sight. We know it by God's 
word, in order to avoid it ; they know it not only 



FEOM THE JOY OF HEAVEN. 313 

so, but by beholding it. We are warned of eternal 
realities ; they are in the midst of them. 

It is joy over one sinner that r&penteth. The whole 
emotion of heaven turns on that. That is the one 
only point in the life of mortals that excites any in- 
terest in heaven, and that commands the interest of 
all heaven. Without that, men are of no worth ; 
they are the cast-off lumber of creation ; they are fit 
only to be burned ; they are good for nothing but 
to illustrate God's justice ; they are of no more in- 
terest than the fallen angels. But while there is a 
possibility of repentance, they are objects of interest 
and of affectionate ministry to all heaven ; and the 
moment repentance begins, so soon as in any lost 
soul that light is seen breaking out of darkness, then 
there is joy in heaven. It is as if all heaven's in- 
habitants were gazing towards a dark quarter of the 
universe, where God is going to light up a point 
hitherto black, dreary and unknown, with the sudden 
blaze of a new created world in glory. When the 
light flames out into the void of chaos, the morning 
stars shall sing together, and all the sons of God 
shall shout for joy. So is the joy over one sinner 
that repenteth. The repentance is the flame of a 
new radiant lustre hung up in God's universe ; it is 
the light of a new creation of God. The repentance 
is life out of death, light out of darkness, holiness 
out of sin, bliss out of guilt and misery, love out of 
enmity and rebellion, heaven out of hell. There is 
nothing but this in the life of a sinner that can make 
him the subject of a blissful interest in heaven — 
nothing but this that makes a soul worthy of the 

14 



314 THE ARGUMENT OF RUIN, 

notice of heaven — nothing but this that can awaken 
joy in heaven. If yon would ever produce joy in 
heaven, or be the possessor of joy yourself, then 
repent ! This is the only possibility of your salvation. 
It is joy over one sinner. If there were hut one in 
all the guilty part of God's universe, that would be 
enough to produce this joy, enough to illustrate 
God's glory, the Saviour's love, the wonders of re- 
demption ; enough to create an eternity of blessed- 
ness out of an eternity of woe. Nothing could 
more strikingly demonstrate the infinite worth of 
the soul, the dreadfulness of its destruction, the 
importance of its salvation ; one soul, no matter 
whose, for there is no respect of persons with God, 
and the soul of the poorest beggar is of the same in- 
finite worth as that of the greatest philosopher or 
monarch on his throne. It is one sinner's repent- 
ence, one sinner's salvation, that stirs all heaven. 
Amidst the truths of doctrine flaming out from this 
great fact there shines prominent the truth that re- 
pentance is salvation ; that God will never leave a 
soul once penitent to fall away and perish. Such 
souls are kept by the power of God through faith 
unto salvation. Otherwise the joy of heaven would 
be a mistaken joy, and the sympathy of heaven a 
mistaken sympathy. But it is joy there, even while 
the soul is yet struggling here. It is joy there, as for 
a glorious certainty, even while in this world there 
is yet doubt and darkness. It is joy there, because, 
when a sinner repents, a sinner is saved. Hell is 
despoiled of a victim, and heaven is enriched with 
a soul in the image of Christ. 



FROM THE JOY OF HEAVEN. 315 

Furthermore, the repentance of the soul is the 
thing for which Christ died, Christ, the Son of God 
Incarnate, and the accomplishment of that object is 
infinite joy. This is the object of His mission on 
earth, and the inhabitants of heaven know it. They 
know well that Christ came to seek and to save that 
which was lost. They know the amazing instru- 
mentalities and agencies put in motion to accom- 
plish this object, and the mighty transaction 
planned from eternity and finished on Calvary, and 
in heaven itself, by that sacrifice through the Eter- 
nal Spirit, that stupendous work of Love, the 
foundation of the possibility of repentance. And 
that for which Christ died, occupies the attention 
and engages the activity of heaven. It cannot be 
otherwise. Of the angels of God it is said, Are they 
not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister to 
those who shall be heirs of salvation ? A great, yea, 
a truly astonishing passage, opening to us, as 
through a wide-flung gate, a sudden view of the 
rushing activities of all heaven in this work of hu- 
man redemption ; the incessant holy ministries of 
angelic beings waiting upon His movements who is 
King of saints, and who hath at His control, as the 
Captain of salvation, all principalities and powers, 
and every agency and name that is named or is 
active, either in this world or in that which is to 
come. 

The great passages in Daniel 7: 10, and in 
Eevelation 19 : 11, and onward, are similar dis- 
closures as to the work that absorbs the active 
ministry of heaven. It could not be otherwise than 



316 THE AKGUMENT OF KUIN 



that that object for which Christ incomprehensibly 
emptied Himself of that Divine glory which He had 
with the Father before the world was, and as it 
were absented Himself from heaven, and became in- 
carnate, and died upon the cross to bring it about, 
should command the attention and engage the 
activity of heaven. It could not be otherwise than 
that angels should glory in its accomplishment. 
And whatever incomprehensible mystery there 
might and must be to the intellect, to the intelli- 
gence of all heaven, in the incarnation and the cruci- 
fixion, it would all serve, not to distract the attention 
of angelic minds from the great end of this mystery, 
but to raise that object into more commanding 
attractiveness and brightness, and to fix the instant 
gaze of souls with more intense interest upon it. 
Incomprehensibility there must be, to them as well 
as to us, in the mystery of the incarnation. The 
goings forth of Emmanuel from heaven, the veiling 
of that Divine Person in human flesh, the process, 
whatever it might be, alluded to by the Apostle 
Paul in the second chapter in the Epistle to the 
Philippians, when He who was in the form of God, 
and for whom it was no robbery to be equal with 
God, made Himself of no reputation, and took upon 
Him the form of a servant, and was made in the 
likeness of men, is to us entirely inconceivable, 
and must have been to all heaven incomprehensi- 
ble. He, by whom all things were created, visible 
and invisible, worlds and creatures, thrones and 
dominions, principalities and powers ; He by whom 
all things consist, and who must be omnipresent to 



FKOM THE JOY OF HEAVEN. 817 

all beings and things of His dominions ; He to 
whom it was said, Thy throne, God, is forever 
and ever ; He of whom, and of whose glory in the 
heavens, amid the worship of the holy seraphim, 
Isaiah had that glorious vision, recorded in the 
sixth chapter of his prophecy, when one cried to 
another and said Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of 
hosts, the whole earth is fall of His glory ; He, the 
object of that worship, the Creator and Lord of 
those angelic beings, with their thundering halle- 
luias, wondrously withdrawing Himself from that 
worship in heaven, and passing into the form of a 
servant on earth, entering into an eclipse, so to 
speak, of which the first portion of the veil visible 
must have been the form of the Babe in Bethlehem. 

O there was a mystery in that, more incompre- 
hensible to them, heaven-ward, than the sight of the 
Babe, and the revelation of incarnate Deity to us 
earth-ward. For to us the man Christ Jesus is seen 
first, and we travel from that sight to the revelation 
of His Deity. But they had seen only the Divinity, 
seen their own God and Creator, seen Him ; of whom 
the first annunciation in his essential glory, before 
yet the angelic minds of heaven had been created, 
is the ultimate declaration, beyond which the 
thought of created beings either in heaven or on 
earth cannot go, that, "In the beginning was the 
Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word 
was God. All things were made by Him, and with- 
out Him was not anything made that was made." 

Well! to see Him, their Creator, dying away 
from that infinite glory, of which His was the 



318 THE ARGUMENT OF RUIN, 

mastership, the ownership, and theirs the adoration 
and the service, to see Him passing into the form of 
a servant, making Himself of no reputation, to see 
Him entering into that veiling, that incarnation, 
the reality of which is the certainty of human 
redemption, the central revelation of God's plan, 
and the invisibility of the Deity becoming visible ; 
this must have been to them a greater incomprehen- 
sibility than it ever yet has been to us. "We feel as 
though no word could have been uttered in heaven 
while this was taking place, as though the inhabit- 
ants of heaven must have gazed silently, in sub- 
missive adoration and awe. But when He bringeth 
in His first-begotten into the world, He saith, "Let 
all the angels of God worship Him I" and some- 
thing of the glory of that worship was made visible 
to the shepherds, when suddenly there was with the 
announcing angel a multitude of the heavenly host, 
praising God and saying, " Glory to God in the 
highest, and on earth peace, good will to men !" 

But now, this is to be marked, that the greater 
the incomprehensibility of these transactions in 
heaven, the more immeasurably did it enhance and 
exalt beyond all conception the greatness of the 
end for which, as to earth, as to mankind, these 
transactions were taking place, the repentance of 
the ruined sinner, the salvation of the lost soul. So 
far from being turned away from that, or distracted 
into idle questionings by the incomprehensibility of 
the stupendous scenes of the incarnation, the minds 
of angels were turned by it to more adoring views 
of God's love, and more exalted conceptions of the 



FEOM THE JOY OP HEAVEN. 319 

magnitude of the interests at stake, the infinite 
greatness and worth of the object to be accom- 
plished ; and they were fired with more intense de- 
sires to be in some measure instrumental in accom- 
plishing that purpose. They saw, by the mystery 
of that incarnation, the worth of the soul, the cer- 
tainty and awfulness of the penalty of God's law, 
the dreadfulness of sin, the eternal ruin of man 
without a recovery from sin, the glory and blissful- 
ness of one sinner's repentance. They saw the 
glory of the Saviour manifested in that ; the glory 
of Grod in the display of all His attributes. They 
saw the glory of the Divine Word, which had been 
veiled for this purpose, coming out from that veiling, 
that eclipse, into a brightness transcending the most 
transcendent of all previous manifestations of might, 
majesty and loveliness. They saw the happiness of 
the redeemed soul, the awfulness of the hell of sin 
and wrath, from which the repenting sinner is res- 
cued, and the ravishing excellence, glory and beauty 
of that perfect image of the Saviour, into which, by 
faith, through the power of the Eternal Spirit, the 
rescued soul is transfigured. All this in the regen- 
eration of one sinner that repenteth! All these 
elements of blissfulness in the tide of joy that as a 
ground wave rolls through all heaven at the salva- 
vation of one repenting and returning sinner ! 

Now, there are some glorious and blessed lessons 
out of this survey of things through the window of 
this grand revelation ; and, first, that which makes 
joy in heaven calls for joy on earth ; and that which 
commands the activity of heaven, in blissful ministry, 



320 THE ARGUMENT OF RUIN 



with, seraphic fire, demands the activity of earth. 
The hearts of Christians should be on fire here, as 
the hearts of angels are on fire there. There is no 
other object that can be put into comparison or com- 
petition for one moment with this of the sinner's 
repentance, or that does not sink into insignificance, 
or pass into absolute wickedness, beside it. It jus- 
tifies all the activity of our being in the work of 
revivals of religion, all our efforts to win souls to 
Christ. It puts the mark of reprobation on all in- 
difference to this great interest. It shows, in the 
most striking light, the sinfulness and wonderfulness 
of such indifference, and how buried in sin men 
must be, to remain insensible to transactions involv- 
ing their own eternal welfare to such a degree and 
in such relations, as on that account alone to stir the 
heavenly world to its centre. All heaven is anxious 
for earth, astir for earth ; but earth is heedless for 
itself, and careless both of hell and heaven, — a com- 
bined blindness and madness of infinite malignity 
and destructiveness. 

But again, that which commands the belief of 
heaven should command the belief of earth. The 
blessed creatures of the heavenly world do not draw 
back from plainly -revealed truths or facts, because 
of real or alleged incomprehensibilities; nay, the 
incomprehensibilities attending the incarnation of 
the Son of God for our redemption only deepen their 
sense of the necessity of such an interposition, and 
confirm their knowledge of all the plain facts of sin 
and of endless retribution. But here in this world, 
sinners on trial for their eternal retribution put the 



FKOM THE JOY OF HEAVEN. 821 

incomprehensibilities of God's triune or incarnate 
existence as a breast-work of unbelief against the 
plainest truths of the gospel. The blind, unbelieving 
moles of creation look out from their dirt-hills, and 
deny the things which they cannot understand, or 
take, by virtue of speculation about them, a release 
from truths as plain as the noonday. 

And such truths are those of an eternal retribu- 
tion, as illustrated by the cross, and by this very joy 
of heaven over souls repentant at the cross. And 
therefore, furthermore, that which excites the dread 
of heaven should excite the dread of earth. The 
terror of heaven on our account is the wrath to 
come ; the anxiety of heaven on our account is de- 
liverance from that wrath to come, by our repentance. 
And shall there be no corresponding anxiety here ? 
Shall there be stupidity here, while all around us in 
God's universe there is a stir of anxiety, activity and 
sympathy, both in heaven and hell ; for hell itself 
is moved to destroy us, as heaven to save us. 

There is no defect of warning here, no more than 
there. We are in rebellion against God, and we 
know both its wickedness and its consequences. 
The riot act has been read ever since the creation ; 
it is read in God's word ; it is read in men's own 
souls. Conscience reads it perpetually amidst the 
mob of a man's wicked thoughts ; and still men rush 
on to perdition. They themselves together make 
such a stunning noise in their rebellion, their ten 
thousand activities of sin, their hubbub of earthly 
vanities, that they will not hear God's voice ; and 
multitudes of them, when they do hear, do not be- 

14* 



322 FROM THE JOY OF HEAVEN". 

lieve, or endeavor not to believe, that God will ever 
carry His threats into execution. " Oh," they say, 
" the guns are only loaded with blank cartridges !" 
And because sentence against an evil work is not 
executed speedily, therefore the hearts of the sons 
of men are fully set in them to do evil. 

But whose fault is all this unbelief and insensibility 
and ignorance ? And when the great guns of God's 
promised justice are fired in upon the masses of the 
rebellious, then how terrible will be the conviction, 
the consternation, and the misery I 



Character an& €mtqatMt&. 

The beginning of evil is in man's departure from 
God; the perfection and immutability of evil is 
when God departs from man. The essence of hap- 
piness and misery is in character ; a man sinful in 
heart shall be filled with his own ways, and the good 
man also shall be satisfied from himself. The de- 
termination of character is in man's own power ; for 
he may get from God what elements of good he 
pleases, and may have whatever of evil he pleases 
taken away. The good is of God, and if a man 
sows that, he shall eat the fruit of it. The bad is of 
man and Satan, and if a man chooses that, he shall 
eat of the fruit of that. The warning against it and 
the salvation from it are of God. The misery con- 
sequent upon it is of the sinner's own self, and not 
of God; though God is the security, both to the 
righteous and the wicked, of having their respective 
wages paid to them. I will bring evil on this peo- 
ple, says God, even the fruit of their thoughts, 
because they have not hearkened to my words, nor 
to my law, but have rejected them. Say ye to the 
righteous that it shall be well with them, for they 
shall eat the fruit of their doings ; but they that 



824 CHARACTER AND CONSEQUENCES. 

plough, iniquity and sow wickedness shall reap the 
same. This throws all consequences, even for eter- 
nity, back upon character. Character produces con- 
sequences, and is the great lord of destiny forever. 

God tells us that character formed according to 
His word, by His counsel, is safe, and forms a se- 
curity of happiness for eternity ; but otherwise, it is 
a security of shame and misery, the shame and mis- 
ery being the inevitable result and production of an 
irreligious character. Now, if this requires faith, in 
order to believe it, it is faith, in God, which, is the 
highest exercise of reason, and moreover it is not a 
faith without corroboration in experience. By see- 
ing what vast and dreadful consequences wait often 
upon guilty character and upon single acts of crime, 
even here in a world of probation, we see continual 
proofs that a man's misery in the eternal world ma}^ 
be wholly from himself, and wholly the natural re- 
sult and working of inevitable consequences. 

Now, all great demonstrations of these principles 
in this life, are important. They ought to be ex- 
amined and pondered. The history of wicked 
souls is a history of wretchedness, up to the last 
point at which you can trace them ; and if you 
think that wretchedness shall stop in eternity, it 
must be because the character of the soul stops, 
which is impossible. But even if it did stop, still 
there is the fruit of character, and the fruit of the 
sinner's doings, to come back to the sinner as his 
harvest ; and how he is to shake off that, how he is 
to get rid of that, no man can tell. But how the 
harvest may come, how it does come, how certain it 



CHARACTER AND CONSEQUENCES. 325 

is, may be known even by experience in this life, 
and often is known, in extraordinary instances, 
which are like the thunder before a storm, like the 
warning signs of an earthquake, and which the hu- 
man soul should make the most of, for its admoni- 
tion. 

All great crimes and great virtues are public 
property. They are warnings of evil, and examples 
of good. In the Word of God a man who commits 
a great crime, be he Cain, David, Peter, or Judas, is 
marked, and the case is held up, in clear light, with- 
out any disguise, for the world's admonition and in- 
struction. The position and family of the man 
make no difference ; there is the sternest impartiality 
and openness. The repentance of the man, if he 
have become penitent, is recorded ; and repentance 
makes a great difference in the divine administration 
with the man. Eepentance in faith is the very con- 
dition of forgiveness. He that confesseth and for- 
saketh his sins shall find mercy, however black and 
enormous those sins may have been. But Grod is 
no respecter of persons. Neither wealth, nor re- 
spectability, nor position, nor family, are regarded 
by Him, except as aggravating the guilt of the of- 
fender. If a man is guilty, he must bear the con- 
sequences ; and the higher his position in society, 
and the more involved and vast and important his 
social relationships and responsibilities, the more 
terrible are those consequences, and the more im- 
portant is that example. So that while in one view, 
as respects those who suffer from another's crime, 
the greatness of their interests and affections, so 



826 CHARACTER AND CONSEQUENCES. 

dreadfully sacrificed, deepens the public sympathy ; 
in another view, in respect to the guilt that disre- 
gards and sacrifices such interests and affections, it 
increases, or ought to increase, the public hatred of 
the crime and indignation against the criminal. In 
proportion as the consequences of his crime are felt 
by others in misery, they ought to be felt by him in 
punishment. And if they have to bear their share 
in the consequences, he certainly will have to bear 
his. And a great part of his guilt, and what in- 
deed he will have to suffer for, besides the direct 
crime, is the bringing such consequences upon oth- 
ers, the disregard of his responsibilities, the sacrifice 
of the interests entrusted to his care. For no man 
liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. In 
another sense besides the Christian sense, this is 
true. A man cannot live, without living for good 
or evil to others ; a man cannot die, without dying 
for good or evil to others. When he is born, other 
interests are born with him, and dependent upon 
him ; while he lives, other interests live with him, 
and are affected by him ; and his sun can neither 
rise nor set, but with others, experience of its lights 
and shadows. 

Therefore God always makes great far-shining 
harbor-beacons out of great virtues, and great light- 
houses on desperate reefs out of great crimes and 
great criminals. Some men are very willing this 
should be done in respect to virtue, with unregen- 
erate men ; philosophic virtues, moral virtues, pub- 
lic spirit and philanthropy ; but the virtues of grace 
and the characters of grace, they despise, and set 



CHAEACTEE AND CONSEQUENCES. 827 

down such men as hypocrites. And in respect to 
crime, if they can catch a professedly religious man 
in such a snare, they are glad enough to make an 
example of such a one. They are very willing to 
harangue the world about David's murder, but if 
you speak in the same terms about any other mur- 
derer, they accuse you of cruelty, and of a want of 
sympathy with an unfortunate criminal. "We have 
known men" go to the verge of blasphemy in con- 
signing the whole character of David to the deepest 
damnation, who would perhaps shed tears of sensi- 
bility over the same guilt, unaccompanied by David's 
repentance. There are men who so hate religion, 
that they cannot endure it, even as the cure of 
crime. 

Now, society are bound to get all the good they 
can out of great crimes as well as great virtues. 
Upon the criminal, the government must execute 
the deserved punishment, for the good of others, 
for the protection of society, for a warning to the 
world. If a man will sacrifice both himself and 
others in the indulgence of his own passions, then 
both God and man must bring all the good that is 
possible out of that evil, must make use of the 
warning, must hold up the lessons. And Grod, by 
the freedom with which he lets consequences come 
down even in this world, which confessedly is not 
the world of retribution, but of restraint, shows us 
what may be expected, when consequences shall 
have their full swing and development, when com- 
plete justice shall be administered, and men shall be 
judged according to the fruit of their doings, as well 



828 CHAKACTEK AND CONSEQUENCES. 

as the nature of their character. For if God spared 
not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to 
hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to 
be reserved nnto judgment, and spared not the old 
world, bringing in the flood upon the world of the 
ungodly, and turning the cities of Sodom and Go 
morrah into ashes condemned them with an over- 
throw, making them an example, then the Lord 
knoweth how to reserve the unjust now and in 
every age unto the judgment to be punished. And 
if those consequences here in this world, on the com- 
mission of crime, were so tremendous, what will 
they be when the fountains of the great deep of jus- 
tice shall be broken up in the eternal world, and 
God shall let all the consequences of sin unrestricted 
come to pass ? All present consequences are in one 
sense mere warnings ; all present experience of the 
evil of sin is but a prediction of what is to come ; 
and all present sight and demonstration of what sin 
can do is but a foreshadowing and forewarning sym- 
bol of what it must do in eternity, when God lets 
loose his hold of consequences, and adopts the con- 
sequences as part of a just retribution. 

In the Tyrol mountains a band of patriots pre- 
paring against an invading army, loosened an im- 
mense mass of huge fragments of rock and soil 
upon the brow of perpendicular precipices under 
which the invaders had to pass, and then lay in am- 
bush above, ready at an instant's signal to topple 
down the ruin. The invading army rolled on, glit- 
tering and secure, till it got within the heart of 
these fastnesses, and not an obstacle was to be met, 



CHARACTER AND CONSEQUENCES. 329 

nor an enemy to be seen. And in that deep defile 
there was something ominous and awful in the lone- 
liness and silence. Suddenly there echoed through 
the pass a clear ringing voice from the heights, " In 
the name of the Holy Trinity, cut all loose !" And 
instantly the vast and irresistible rock-cataract rolled 
down into the defile, crushing and burying almost 
the whole army. The souls of sinners pass through 
such defiles sometimes even in this world, and con- 
sequences come rushing down upon them like a tor- 
rent. But this is nothing to what shall take place 
in the Eternal World when the time of suspension 
is ended, and the voice is heard through the uni- 
verse, " In the name of the Holy Trinity, cut all 
loose !" Consequences now are tied up, under the 
power of the Eedeemer's sufferings and death, while 
mercy is offered, and a salvation is possible both 
from the guilt and the consequences of sin. And 
God's messengers and mercies do, as it were, stand 
at the mouth of those eternal defiles, and warn men 
away ; there are passes, which if you enter, you are 
lost, there being a time, when all that keeps the ruin 
from descending will, in the name of the Holy 
Trinity, be cut loose. 

At present, Grod is satisfied with warning men of 
the consequences to come. Afterwards, when the 
time for warning and escape has gone by, there will 
be the consequences beheld and experienced ; and 
if you now will not be warned by consequences re- 
ported to you as coming, others will be warned, 
when consequences are adopted as retribution ; and 
the whole universe will be warned by your very 



330 CHARACTER AND CONSEQUENCES. 

sufferance of these consequences. God will get this 
good out of you, even if you continue his enemy ; 
you shall glorify the divine attribute of justice, and 
serve to keep others from sin, even in the endurance 
of that penalty, which you affected to deny, or 
were too heedless to regard, or used no endeavor to 
escape. At present, the experience is that of mercy, 
and the question is whether you will be insured 
against consequences by taking hold upon the 
mercy, whether you will flee to Christ, and be in- 
sured against the penalty by forgiveness and grace 
in Him. At present the character is forming, its 
fixedness for eternity being determined by the 
choice you make in reference to Christ ; by the 
manner in which you live and the state in which 
you die, in relation to Him. Afterwards come the 
results of life and character. And when they come, 
they will be very different from the warning. 

But results even here are sometimes so astound- 
ing ; and when they come even partially in this 
world, they bring upon the sinful soul such a huge 
overwhelming anguish and sense of guilt, that it is 
easy to forsee, let but every act and principle of 
life be visited in a similar way, what an infinite 
weight and train of evil the soul will have to en- 
counter in Eternity. Our sins in the light of their 
consequences merely, to say nothing of the light of 
God and His holiness, would be a terrible array ; 
the view would be intolerable. Consequences, when 
they are known, arm the conscience with a new au- 
thority, and create a new and peculiar sense of sin. 
Sometimes, in this world, an act of bare careless- 



CHAEACTEE AND CONSEQUENCES. 331 

ness, attended with fearful consequences, agonizes 
the mind with a remorse like that for murder. We 
have seen the description of such anguish in a man 
appointed to the charge of watching the lanterns on 
board a beacon-ship. The ship was moored upon a 
dangerous sand-bank, to keep up a floating light as 
a warning, and it was the duty of the keeper to see 
to it that by night the lights were always burning. 
One stormy night, shortly after he began to take 
charge of the beacon, he fell into a profound sleep 
while watching upon deck. From this he was 
awakened by shouts and cries from the sea, which 
was raging furiously. The lamps in the lantern had 
all been extinguished while he slept, and for want 
of the beacon, a large ship had run a-ground, and 
the waves were then breaking over her with great 
violence. When the lantern was lighted again and 
hoisted, the vessel could be seen breaking up, and 
the people crying, struggling and sinking among 
the billows. They seemed every one to upbraid 
the keeper of the light-ship, whose untimely sleep 
had been the occasion of their untimely end. No- 
thing could be done to save them, and the scene of 
their death haunted the man night and day. The 
masts of the wrecked vessel projected above the sur- 
face of the sea for several months after she was lost, 
keeping him in recollection of the night in which 
so many human beings perished in consequence of 
his neglect and carelessness. It almost made him 
mad, the memory of that one night of horror. 

Now, in this world, we are able to trace conse- 
quences but a very little way, and in very small 



832 CHARACTER AND CONSEQUENCES. 

part ; and there may be a thousand results from 
our habits and actions, our sins of omission and of 
commission, which we do not yet see, for one which 
we do see. As, for example, the ramifications of the 
consequences of that night's carelessness would ex- 
tend through all the relationships and responsibili- 
ties of every human being lost that night, through 
many a circle of interests unseen, unheard of. And 
in view of this fact, who is not ready to exclaim 
with David, " Who can understand his errors ?" 
Who can know the full nature and extent of his 
guilt, till he sees, as God sees, how far his guilt has 
worked, and what it has accomplished? And 
hence God says that he tries the reins and the 
heart, in order to give to every man exactly accord- 
ing to his ways, and according to the fruit of his 
doings. The fruit of his doings! That is a tre- 
mendous computation, of which eternity alone can 
reveal the sum. No man knows as yet either the 
infinitude of his influences and responsibilities, or 
the depths of his heart ; neither what things may 
be let down into it, nor what may be brought up 
out of it. No man knows to what desperate courses 
temptation might lead him ; into what snares, that 
look now too infernal to be thought of, his own 
heart, left of God, might precipitate him. 

There are tendencies in that heart which even 
now, under God's warnings, are burning on, like 
trains of wet powder with slow matches, leading to 
magazines in the centre of great mountains. There 
is no knowing what trains of passion there may be, 
nor how near they may have already burned to- 



CHARACTER AND CONSEQUENCES. 333 

wards the catastrophe, nor what tremendous maga- 
zines of consequences, what rock-galleries of evil to 
be exploded they may lead to. Sometimes, God in 
His Providence cuts a ditch, as it were, across the 
train, and so stops it. Sometimes great calamities 
intervene, to save the man, by losses and disappoint- 
ments here, from ruin in eternity. Just as, in a 
great devouring fire, in a large city, whole streets of 
buildings are sometimes torn down or blown up, to 
stay the conflagration, so the dearest earthly inter- 
ests of men have to be demolished, for the sake of 
their eternal interests. Sometimes the experienced 
consequences, even of great crimes, in this world, 
are thus the means of staying the conflagration. 
The very sentence of death for murder may be the 
means of a preparation for forgiveness and life ever- 
lasting ; the consequences experienced in this world 
of a particular great crime against God and man, 
may lead to a salutary deep conviction of sin, all 
sin, in the sight of God, and heartfelt sorrow for 
the same, deep conviction of the soul's ruin, and a 
hearty penitent search for the divine mercy and 
grace in regeneration. 

But all providences and all consequences are un- 
availing without this. All the ditches digged in a 
man's path, to stop his career, all the houses blown 
up to stay the conflagration, will be of no use, no 
efficacy, without the spirit of God received into the 
soul. The fire will still burn on underground, or at 
some unexpected point it will leap clear across the 
ditch that was digged to stop it, and on it goes, ca- 
reering towards eternity, where the gulf of death 



334 CHARACTER AND CONSEQUENCES. 

itself will not stop it, but will only give a clear un- 
interrupted sweep to its devouring energies. 

Sacred and solemn are the lessons and admoni- 
tions, from such realities. As sinful beings, it is 
clear that we have put so many things in train for 
explosions of evil, that there is no evil which can be 
imagined that may not at any time burst upon us, 
unless we seek safety in Christ, and seek it in sea- 
son. As sinful beings, we are under all the penal- 
ties of God's law, and all the principles of an eternal 
retribution. We walk beneath a firmament of 
upper, nether, and surrounding fires. Beneath the 
glorious and merciful restraint of the atonement, 
God holds them in, and bears them back, on every 
side, from hurting us, for the present time of proba- 
tion, and during the present offer of salvation in 
Christ. But they are the realities of things, the 
certainties of the universe, the inevitable upshot of 
consequences, the penalty, the principle, the neces- 
sity, of law and government. God holds them in, 
during a world of probation, so that things in such 
a world, appear to be really upside down, and are 
not as they should be, according to eternal law and 
righteousness, which is against all sin, and connects 
all sin with suffering. Yet now and then, even 
here, the reality, the penalty, the principle, breaks 
out. There are, as it were, safety valves, here and 
there, in this iron firmament above and around us ; 
this firmament of God's restraint, that for the present 
holds off the fire from us ; and now and then one of 
those safety valves or demonstraters flies open, and 
lets down a jet of flame, a spout of hideous combus- 



CHARACTER AND CONSEQUENCES. 385 

ticn, a sheet of fire like that which consumed Sodom 
and Gomorrah. Men gaze at these things with mo- 
mentary horror, but still go on. Perhaps they pick 
up the falling lava, when it has got a little cool, and 
speculate about its origin, and its meaning, and the 
extent of pent-up fires that it may be supposed to 
indicate, and whether the firmament itself will ever 
fall. But few believe the danger, and secure them- 
selves against it. They are too busy to take care of 
their souls, too fond of self-indulgence to listen to 
God's warnings. They want none of his counsel, 
and despise all his reproofs. Therefore shall they 
eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with 
their own devices. 



THE PK0VISI01N. 

Consequences are always a tremendous subject, 
with eternity in view ; but there is nothing in the 
utmost reach of consequences unveiled before 
us, which gives the least shadow of a reason for 
complaint against God, were it only because His at- 
tributes and system of government and our relations 
to it, the tendencies of things and our responsibili- 
ties, are fully and fairly laid before us. We are not 
only informed of the good and invited to it, but are 
told of the evil and warned off; and therefore, if 
we madly incur the evil, it is our own choice, 
against God's choice for us. We shall now consider 
first the danger and the evil before us, as God warns 
us of it, as it lies in the nature of God's retributive 
system, against which if we run, notwithstanding 
all God's warnings, it is certain that instead of God 
bringing the evil upon us, it is we who bring the 
evil on ourselves. And second, we shall consider 
the danger and the evil as to the voluntary habits 
of character which we form in sin, in the disregard 
of God's warnings, and the neglect of prayer, by 



FOREWARNED, FOREARMED. 337 

which habits and tendencies of character we ensure 
a shipwreck to the soul. 

I say, then, that we are not in the midst of those 
evils and dangers which surround us, without the 
provision of a perfect security against them, if we 
choose to avail ourselves of it. We can foresee the 
evil and hide ourselves ; and if we hearken to God, 
He himself will hide us. 

We say, Forewarned, forearmed. It is a proverb 
of deep meaning. A man warned of an evil, which 
is not inevitable, may avoid it ; he has the means 
of avoiding it, if he will apply them. It may cost 
effort, watchfulness, diligence; it requires forecast, 
arrangement, the application of his faculties and 
energies in earnest, to prepare for the crisis, the 
emergency. But if he will prepare for it, he may ; 
he may be ready to meet it ; he may secure himself 
against it. Forewarned, he is forearmed. The 
weapons are in his power, the armor of defence is 
round about him. And even if the evil be inevita- 
ble, yet still, being forewarned, he is forearmed, and 
may be prepared to encounter it, so that when it 
comes he may bear up manfully, and by the pro- 
visions he has been enabled to make, in the time 
given him for such preparation, may come forth, if 
not absolutely triumphant, yet not destroyed, nor 
fatally injured. Nay, the wise and earnest grap- 
pling with inevitable evil, and the patient endurance 
of it when it comes, the preparation for it as fore- 
seen, and the discipline in passing through it, may be 
a great benefit to his character ; and on the whole, 
the evil, he being forewarned of it, and having acted 



338 FOREWARNED, FOREARMED. 

the part of a wise and noble nature in meeting and 
bearing it, may be an absolute blessing. He may 
ride out the gale, though he cannot escape it. But 
a sudden hurricane, uuexpected, unknown, or a 
storm for which, though he knew it was coming, he 
made no preparation, may carry him to the bottom. 
When the signs in the heavens forewarn an expe- 
rienced navigator of the approach of a sudden tem- 
pest, he instantly takes in sail, makes all fast, bat- 
tens down the hatches, sets every man at his post, 
and so waits the bursting of the hurricane. Fore- 
warned, he is forearmed. A sudden fall in the bar- 
ometer, while he was sitting in his cabin, when the 
heavens were as yet cloudless, and the air serene 
and clear, may have been his first warning, and he 
alone, of all in the ship, may have seen it ; and it 
may have been observed by him at that particular 
moment, merely because he happened, without the 
intention of an observation, to turn his eye towards 
the instrument ; or it may have been observed, be- 
cause, being in a latitude where sudden storms were 
not unlikely, he kept an unwearied vigilance, and 
consulted, every few moments, the indications of 
that faithful sentinel of tempests. But, however 
that may be, when the warning comes, it no sooner 
forewarns than it forearms him. He may neglect 
the warning, and thus refuse to use the armor ; but 
he might have used it, and was bound to do so } 
and when it came, it threw upon him the whole 
responsibility of guarding against the predicted 
evil, or of all the consequences, if he went on to 
meet it unprepared. The evil is inevitable, the 



FOREWARNED, FOREARMED. 339 



tempest must come, but if he calls all hands at once 
to action, lets them know what he knows, puts 
every man on guard, and the ship in storm-trim, 
then when the gale rages, though the ship may 
labor and plunge, and be in great peril, yet she 
rights again, by God's blessing on human watchful- 
ness and effort, and rides out the storm in safety. 
Forewarned, the Captain was forearmed. But if he 
had been heedless of the warning, or had counted 
upon time enough by the next watch, or the next 
morning, if he had been seated at a table with a 
merry party of passengers, or at a game of cards, 
which he was unwilling to interrupt, and so had 
taken for his own and their amusement the time 
given him to prepare for the safety of the ship, then 
the storm bursting, finds everything loose, and all 
sail set, and comes like the crash of an earthquake. 
The masts go by the board, the ship founders, and 
every soul perishes ; and the whole responsibility of 
every life lost comes upon the Captain, heedless of 
the warning, which it was his office to know, and 
his business to obey. Forewarned, he was fore- 
armed, and he might have been prepared; and in 
that view, it was not the storm that did the injury, 
but his carelessness. If he had put to sea without a 
compass or a rudder, or with a supply of provisions 
so insecure and insufficient as to produce a famine, 
it would have been his own heedlessness, and not 
the laws of nature, nor the violence of the waves, 
nor the ungovernable will of the winds, nor the 
pathless wilderness of ocean, that produced all the 
evils consequent on such a course. And just so, if 



340 FOREWARNED, FOREARMED. 

his ship is wrecked because of his delay or heed- 
lessness in not preparing for a storm of which he is 
warned, or if he runs upon a reef, laid down in his 
chart, of his nearness to which he was ignorant be- 
cause he had not taken the observations which he 
was bound to take in order to ascertain his lati- 
tude, it is neither the storm nor the reef that wrecks 
his ship, but his own heedlessness. 

Now, apply this to our spiritual destiny. For, even 
thus, it is not the laws of God, that wreck and ruin 
our souls, if we run against them, but our own ini- 
quity in disobeying them. It is not the reefs of evil, 
eternal though they be, that bring us up, and de- 
stroy us, but we, who madly, and against all warn- 
ing, run upon them. It is not the bursting, over- 
whelming hurricane, that sends us to the bottom, but 
our wilful heedlessness in rushing into it, our mad- 
ness in meeting it unprepared, our self-indulgence 
and indolence, taking that time for gratifying our 
own passions, which was given us, with full warning 
of what was to come, that we might avoid the evil. 
The sinner himself, and not God, is the author of 
the sinner's destruction. The prudent man fore- 
seeth the evil and hideth himself; the wicked pass 
on and are punished. God utters His thunders and 
flashes His lightnings across the path of the sinner, 
but he disregards them. On the sea of life, not 
only the barometer in his own soul tells him of the 
coming tempest, and he neglects the warning, but 
even when the clouds roll up angry and heavy be- 
fore him, with the roar of the thunder and the lurid 
play of the lightnings, he steers his ship right into 



FOREWARNED, FOREARMED. 341 

them. God warns him off, but he minds not the 
warning. There is never an inevitable storm, bnt 
he has time to prepare for it, fall notice of it, and 
might ride it out in safety. There is never a reef 
rising, nor a dangerous shoal, but it is laid down in 
his chart, and the means given him to know his 
position, so that he might give it a wide berth, and 
steer clear of it completely, without even coming 
near enough to see the breakers. There is a barom- 
eter in his conscience, and a chart and compass in 
the "Word of God, which, if he would go by it, 
would keep him clear of all danger ; and even when 
he is entering into danger, the elements themselves 
act the sentinel for him in season, and the moaning 
winds, and the agitated waves, and the big beginning 
drops of rain, forewarn him, if the storm be inevita- 
ble, to prepare for it. It never need find him 
unprepared, nor come upon him unawares. But if 
he will not mark these signs in heaven above and 
in the earth beneath, if he will not regard these 
warnings of God, neither in his own soul, nor in 
God's Word, nor in the Divine Providence, nor in 
the gathering elements of wrath and ruin, but will 
pass on and be punished, so be it, since that is his 
decision ; he must eat of the fruit of his own way, 
and be filled with his own devices. 

Forewarned, forearmed. The proverb applies not 
only to the external dangers and evils on our course 
through life, and to the appointed penalties of 
courses of disobedience and folly, if we enter on 
them, but also to the responsibilities of our being, 
the dangers in ourselves, the tendencies, principles, 



342 FOREWARNED, FOREARMED. 

and elements of retribution or of blessedness with 
which we are laden. We are fearfully and wonder- 
fully made, with capabilities, powers, and faculties, 
that in themselves can make a heaven of hell, a hell 
of heaven. Now, knowing all this, knowing before- 
hand the power of habit in character, being told 
plainly by the Lord God, besides knowing it by our 
own experience, — that we are daily treasuring up, 
in what we make of ourselves, in our favorite and 
indulged elements of feeling, of thought, of action, 
in our whole natures, as formed and worked in a 
world of probation, — that we are daily treasuring 
up what we are forever to be and to experience, 
and daily setting in motion trains of tendencies and 
influences, which are to be developed in their conse- 
quences, — and those consequences belonging so ex- 
clusively to our voluntary being, that by them and 
in them we are to abide forever — knowing all this, 
what course do we take in setting forth this being 
of ours into life, daily, as it were, launching anew 
this ship of existence with all its activities and re- 
sponsibilities ? Under whose care do we place it? 
Into whose trust do we commit it ? What officers 
do we put in command? By what principles do 
we determine they shall be guided? What and 
whose chart do we provide, and with what security 
that it shall be faithfully consulted? Who makes 
the barometer that we hang in the cabin ? What 
kind of compass is it that we put in the binnacle ? 
And into whose charge do we put the care of the 
engine ? All these things are for us to determine, 
and we do determine them, and we must abide by 



FOREWARNED, FOREARMED. 343 

the consequences. We know that the result of 
these things is life or death, eternal misery, or eternal 
blessedness. 

If all these things are under the guidance and 
command of God, if it be with reference to what 
He has taught us, and with a simple single-hearted 
regard to principle and duty as marked by Him, that 
we arrange all these things, if we commit the care 
of our mind, heart, life, habits, and whole character, 
to the Lord Jesus Christ, if we go to His Word as 
our chart and compass, if we take our conscience, 
our inward barometer, to Him, to make it right, if 
we commit heart, conscience, understanding, and 
life to His spirit, to mould and guide us according 
to His will, then we are sure of success, and can 
meet with no eviL There shall be no wandering 
from the way, no mistake, no darkness, no running 
upon reefs through intoxication, or wilful ignorance, 
or heedlessness, no explosion, nor sudden hurricane, 
unprovided for and ruinous, but a safe passage, and 
an eternal harbor in heaven. But if a man neglect 
all these things, if he say within himself, To-morrow 
shall be as this day, and much more abundant ; there 
shall no evil come, or before it comes, I shall have 
prolonged time to prepare ; thus far, all has gone on 
well, and no shipwreck, though I have been in 
many seas ; then, as his time past of security or 
exemption is no assurance of safety for one day to 
come, but on the contrary is itself a consideration 
why he should suppose the threatened evil more 
likely to come the very next day, — so in fact it will 



344 FOREWARNED, FOREARMED. 



come, suddenly and unexpectedly, and will cut him 
asunder at an hour when he looked not for it. 

And thus heedlessly do men go on. Because 
sentence against an evil work is not executed speed- 
ily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully 
set in them to do evil. It would seem, in many 
cases, in spite of all the forewarnings of God, to be 
fully set in them to secure evil, and to render it in- 
evitable and eternal. Men put into their characters, 
and cultivate into perfection, evil elements, as sure 
to come out in eternal consequences, as the spots of 
the leopard's cub are sure to be found in the full 
grown creature ; tendencies and habits are fostered, 
by which the soul is sure to make shipwreck ; and 
the shipwreck, when it comes, and comes without 
remedy, is the man's own work, and not God's ; it 
is the man's own work against God's. If a man 
will put his soul under charge of sin and sinful pas- 
sion, instead of God's grace, as the pilot; under 
charge of self-will instead of God as the command- 
er ; then the consequences are of his own making. 

Suppose that a man building a steam-ship should 
supply it with a store of ardent spirits, and put it 
under charge of a drunken engineer, or a man in 
the habit of using intoxicating drink. With all 
this, the vessel may possibly make several voyages 
without injury, and the man, on being expostulated 
with as to his folly, may say and think that things 
are not so bad as they are said to be ; the vessel has 
gone well thus far, and no calamity, and another 
voyage may be just as successful as the last. To- 
morrow shall be as this day, and much more abun- 



FOREWARNED, FOREARMED. Si5 

dant. Such a man goes on in a headstrong, sinful, 
obstinate disregard of consequences ; and now when 
the consequences come, he must be held responsible 
for the whole of them. If the vessel is wrecked, as 
she is likely to be wrecked, in consequence of the 
owner's recklessness, and if the lives of a hundred 
passengers, who were persuaded to embark, because 
of confiding in his prudence and in the good quali- 
ties of the steamer, are sacrificed in the shipwreck, 
certainly the sacrifice lies at his door, and the guilt 
comes upon him. The responsibility has various 
steps, and if it lights on the intoxicated engineer 
first, it lights next and largest on the owner or com- 
mander, who continued him in their employ, and 
supplied the means of his dangerous vices. He 
may be as the entrusted agent, but they are as the 
wholesale dealers and principals in the ruin, and on 
them the responsibility of the ruin falls. 

Just so it is in reference to eternity. Men go on, 
voyage after voyage, year after year, with materials 
and officers in charge, that must, some time or an- 
other, inevitably wreck them ; but because the ruin 
does not come now, they think little of the danger. 
They are forewarned, but it does no good ; they 
take no heed to the warning. On the contrary, 
they take the very steps that are sure to realize the 
warning, to bring down the predicted consequences. 
And in such a case, when the result comes, it will 
come like a whirlwind, realizing the prediction in 
God's "Word, and sweeping everything before it. 

Now, there is a salvation from all this, or God 
would not have been at the pains to spread out all 

15* 



346 FOREWARNED, FOREARMED. 

the warnings in regard to it before ns in His Word. 
There is a deliverance in Christ, both from our- 
selves, and from God's retributive justice ; and it is 
hard to say which is the greater salvation ; for we 
carry within ourselves, in the elements of an un- 
changed sinful character, the very essence and as- 
surance of perdition, the very elements of everlast- 
ing misery. Unbelief and sin in the soul are as un- 
failing a well of everlasting death, as faith and love, 
and the Lord Jesus Himself in the soul, are a well 
of everlasting life. And the question is, Shall the 
depths of death be exhausted and closed up by the 
Eedeemer, and made to give place to the unfailing 
spring of life everlasting in Him? This may be 
done ; the fountains of evil in the soul may be 
sealed, the tendencies of evil all removed and de- 
stroyed, the disposition to sin may be exterminated, 
and nothing but the life of Christ remain abiding 
in the soul, and a will as sweetly subdued to His 
will in meekness and lowliness as His was to His 
Father's, till the soul be presented without spot or 
wrinkle or any such thing, spotless before the throne 
of His glory with exceeding great joy. Thus sin 
gives place to holiness and hell to heaven, wherever 
the Lord Jesus takes up His abode. The sting is 
taken from death, and from every other evil, and 
what before was evil and only evil continually, a 
complication and accumulation of evils, from which 
there was no possibility of being extricated, be- 
comes now a train of God's ministers for good, a 
chariot of fiery and glorious discipline, to which 
Satan himself is harnessed, if God pleases, to do 



FOREWARNED, FOREARMED. 347 



God's bidding ; and life and death, and angels, prin- 
cipalities and powers, adversity or prosperity, temp- 
tations, trials, distresses, tribulations, things present 
or things to come, are bound to that chariot, and 
reined in by the reins of that promise, that all 
things shall work for good to the soul that loves 
God. 

This is our salvation in Christ ; an infinitely per- 
fect and glorious salvation ; and therefore let no 
man complain of any the darkest and severest terms 
and colors, in which the depths of our depravity 
are unveiled before us, and of the hell to which 
that depravity is carrying us; nor let any man 
complain of the endeavor on the part of God and 
his servants to make us realize the intolerable bur- 
den and hatefulness of our guilt ; for if that pro- 
cess of rebuke will but open our eyes, will but 
take away our insensibility, will but carry us, yea 
drive us to the Cross, and compel us to flee in an- 
guish and self-despair to the Saviour, the severest 
treatment is the greatest mercy. An utterly false 
benevolence is that which shrinks from making 
known our guilt and ruin ; a lying sympathy is 
that, and a most reprehensible and contemptible 
dread of giving offence, which fears to mention hell 
to ears polite, which sheaths the sword of the spirit 
in flowers, and never discloses the terror of the 
Lord, but with apologetic circumlocution. God's 
greatest severity is man's mercy, and the Lord Jesus 
is never more tenderly compassionate than when He 
says, " He that belie veth not the Son shall not see 
life, but the wrath of God abideth on him." 



348 FOEE WARNED, FOREARMED. 

Surely, considerate men would much prefer that 
God and His ministers should let them know their 
danger plainly, rather than suffer them to rush on 
blindfold into the midst of it. 

Faithful ministers of the Gospel hare sometimes 
been accused of gloom, darkness, and terror in their 
delineations of the nature and consequences of hu- 
man guilt. What would such critics say, if men 
like Jonathan Edwards stood in all our pulpits, and 
rolled the thunders of God's law "upon the guilty 
conscience ? Let men consider, if the bare description 
of the realities of guilt and perdition be so terrible, 
what must be the realities themselves ? Who can 
dwell in the devouring fire ? Who can lie down to 
everlasting burnings? Let those who dread even 
the announcement of such terrors, hearken to the 
merciful warning in God's Word, and flee to Christ 
Jesus while they may. God be praised that we 
have the possibility, the opportunity, of such a 
refuge ! God be praised that Jesus is an Almighty 
Saviour. It is omnipotence and infinite mercy that 
we need, and now, while the Almighty arm is 
stretched down to us from heaven, let us take hold 
upon it. Now let us cast ourselves upon -God's 
mercy in Christ, praising Him that out of the depths 
of such an abyss of ruin as ours is by character 
and retribution, He can raise us by infinite grace 
and love ! 



%\t Ultimate 8St anting* 

The passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews, on 
which the preceding chapters are founded, pours its 
vast and solemn train of thought and warning on 
the soul, as follows : " For it is impossible for those 
who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the 
heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy 
Ghost, and have tasted the good "Word of God and 
the powers of the World to come, if they shall fall 
away, to renew them again into repentance, seeing 
they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, 
and put Him to an open shame." 

This passage of God's Word, solemn and pun- 
gent as it is, has, we doubt not, in cases almost in- 
numerable, failed of its proper application and ef- 
fect, by being restricted to a supposed particular 
and small class of sinners. It belongs to all, who 
have ever enjoyed the privilege of fully hearing 
the gospel, being enlightened by the Word of God. 
There is not one specification in it which may not 
enter into the Divine Indictment against the whole 
multitude of men in Christendom, who from Sab- 
bath to Sabbath have heard the Word of God pro- 
claimed and expounded. They are fully enlighten- 



350 THE ULTIMATE WARNING. 

ed, they have tasted of the heavenly gift of the Gos- 
pel, and all its blessings have been placed at their 
disposal, they are made partakers of the Holy 
Ghost, according to the sense of this passage, if not 
in its fullest sense, just as the Jews were, who, ac- 
cording to the charge of Stephen, had received the 
law by the disposition of angels, but had not kept 
it, but being stiff-necked and circumcised in heart 
and ears, did always resist the Holy Ghost. But 
all men, under the Gospel, are made more largely 
partakers of the Holy Ghost, than under the law ; 
his ordinary influences are more abundant, and the 
sin of resisting and rejecting those influences is 
more common. The gifts of the Holy Ghost are 
larger and more varied, and all are in one sense par- 
takers of them, who have been instructed in the 
fact of their having been given for the accomplish- 
ment of the work of God's mercy in the redemption 
of mankind. The gracious influences of the Holy 
Spirit continually accompany the Word of God, 
and all who hear it are aware of God's promise to 
give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him, and by 
His Spirit and with His Word God strives with 
men, so that they do really grieve the Holy Spirit 
of God, by continued impenitence and sin. They 
have tasted the good Word of God, the Word 
which is quick and powerful, and able to make 
them wise unto salvation through faith in Christ 
Jesus. They have experienced also the powers of 
the world to come ; the whole revelation from God, 
especially in the New Testament, is a manifestation 
of those powers, and a grappling of them, like 



THE ULTIMATE WAKNING. 351 

great grappling irons, upon the alarmed hearts and 
consciences of men. " Knowing the terror of the 
Lord," says the Apostle, " we persuade men, and are 
made manifest in men's consciences. And knowing 
the glory and joy of the Lord, we persuade men. 
There is hope laid up for you in heaven, and a bliss- 
ful and glorious inheritance, even the inheritance of 
Saints in light, and a crown of righteousness, and 
rest from sorrow and from sin, in the likeness and 
presence of the Saviour, when the Lord Jesus shall 
be revealed from Heaven with His holy angels, in 
flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know 
not Grod, and that obey not the Grospel of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, who shall be punished with everlasting 
destruction from the presence of the Lord, and 
from the glory of His power, when he shall come to 
be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all 
them that believe." 

Now, in this very last quotation from Paul, this com- 
pact and comprehensive burst of revelation, are the 
powers of the world to come ; powers of eternity, 
powers of hell and heaven, powers of promise and 
despair, powers of attraction and of fear. And 
they who hear them, taste them ; they cannot but 
have some recognition of them ; and oftentimes, be- 
neath the working of the Spirit of Grod with them, 
they are powerfully affected by them ; they are 
wrought upon to such a degree, as to feel, if they do 
not exclaim with Agrippa, " Almost thou persuadest 
me to be a Christian." And yet, after all this, in 
multitudes of cases, despising the riches of God's 
goodness, forbeasance, and long-suffering, and not 



352 THE ULTIMATE WARNING. 

recognizing the fact, not remembering it, not laying 
it to heart, nor considering its solemn consequences, 
that the very purpose of this goodness of God is to 
lead them to repentance, arrested and awakened 
men, even after having thus heard and tasted the 
powers of the world to come, and the good Word 
of God, do nevertheless return to their carelessness 
and insensibility, and after their hardness and im- 
penitent heart, led by that, following that, and not 
obeying the powers of the world to come, and the 
good Word of God, and the strivings of the Holy 
Spirit, they treasure up wrath against the day of 
wrath, and revelation of the righteous judgment of 
God ; who will render to every man according to 
his deeds ; to those who by patient continuance in 
well doing seek for glory and honor and immor- 
tality, eternal life ; but unto those who do not obey 
the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and 
wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of 
man that doeth evil, of the Jew first, and also of the 
Gentile ; but glory, honor, and peace, to every man 
that worketh good, to the Jew first and also to the 
Gentile, there being no respect of persons with God. 
Here, again, in this passage, this compact and 
comprehensive delineation of God's ways with man, 
and of careless man's neglect, ingratitude, and mad- 
ness with God, and of the consequences coming, we 
have the powers of the world to come, and the 
manner in which many a hardened and impenitent 
heart treats them. This good Word of God, sharper 
than any two-edged sword, and these powers of the 
world to come, are the rod and spur for a sleeping 



THE ULTIMATE WARNING. 353 

conscience and insensible heart ; they convince of 
sin, they alarm the soul with a sense of danger. 
These powers of the world to come are as the broom 
of the Divine Law ; they perform the work of 
sweeping ; sometimes for a season they sweep the 
habits by an enforced moral reformation ; they 
frighten men from their sins, they almost persuade 
them to flee thoroughly and truly from the wrath 
to come, by submission to the Saviour, by receiving 
Him into the heart, as its everlasting life and pos- 
sessor. 

But now do we wish for a description of the re- 
sult, precisely corresponding to the text, if they do 
not thus admit the Saviour, thus cast themselves on 
Him? We may have it in the words of Jesus 
Christ, which, if they had been written after the 
great and solemn passages from the Epistle to the 
Hebrews, and in illustration of it, could not have 
been a more pointed and enlightening commentary. 
" When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he 
walketh through dry places, seeking rest. And 
finding none, he saith, I will return to my house, 
whence I came out. And when he cometh, he 
findeth it empty, swept and garnished. Then goeth 
he, and taketh to him seven other spirits, more 
wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell 
there ; and the last state of that man is worse than 
the first." 

Or, again, do we wish from another Apostle, a 
similar commentary, an equally powerful and 
solemn explanation? We may have it from Peter, 
concerning those, who for a season, by the power of 



354 THE ULTIMATE WARNING. 

the truth and of conscience, driven into just such a 
temporary reformation, seem clean escaped from 
those who live in error ; but not truly fleeing to 
Christ, nor trusting in His blood, His grace, nor re- 
ceiving Him into their hearts, they still are the ser- 
vants of corruption, with all their promised and 
imagined liberty. " For of whom a man is over- 
come, of the same he is brought into bondage. But 
if, after they have escaped the pollutions of the 
world through the knowledge of the Lord and Sa- 
viour Jesus Christ, they are entangled therein, and 
overcome, the latter end is worse with them than 
the beginning. For it had been better for them not 
to have known the way of righteousness, than, after 
they have known it, to turn from the holy com- 
mandment delivered unto them. But it is happened 
unto them according to the true proverb, The dog 
is turned to his own vomit again, and the sow that 
was washed to her wallowing in the mire." 

The powers of the world to come are elevating 
powers, reforming powers, impelling powers, per- 
suasive, mightily argumentative and constraining, 
when believed and felt. Beneath their influence 
men are naturally drawn upwards towards heaven. 
They are sometimes taken by these powers, as by 
angels, and laid down at heaven's very threshold, 
where one step would be an entrance. But if from 
thence they turn away from such a glorious salva- 
tion, and from such a mighty agency, and from be- 
neath such an impression wrought upon them, and 
such an almost persuasion effected in them, then 
there are no other powers, and no other agencies, 



THE ULTIMATE WAKNING. 355 

that can raise them again to that vantage ground of 
mercy. That good Word of God, and those powers 
of the world to come, and those precions influences 
of the Holy Spirit accompanying them, have lifted 
them into a condition, in which salvation was ac- 
cessible, and very near. But, if from all these advan- 
tages, these pinnacles of opportunity, these ladder- 
tops of means and grace they fall away, or if under 
all these influences and privileges they remain un- 
moved, unconverted, then there is no more hope. 
What possibility remains, after all the round of 
God's applied expedients is run through, and is inef- 
fectual? Light, knowledge, love, warnings, threat- 
enings, promises, invitations, commands, arguments, 
entreaties, gifts, powers, providences, the Word, the 
Spirit, convictions, awakenings, the Cross, the suf- 
ferings, the death of Christ, and the glories of 
Heaven, and the terrors of Hell, all applied in vain ! 
What is there left, what more powerful, what as a 
last resort ? What is there of hope or possibility, to 
throw yourself back upon, after all the agencies of 
mercy in God's universe have been tried in vain ? 

A last resort ! Here we come upon the mighty 
and closing reason for the " impossible," in the ap- 
peal to the Hebrews. It is impossible to renew 
them again unto repentance, seeing that they crucify 
unto themselves the Son of God afresh, and put 
Him to an open shame. They crucify Him unto 
themselves. They do it on their own account, their 
own responsibility. Instead of accepting His cruci- 
fixion for them, and gratefully trusting in it, plead- 
ing it, claiming it as their redemption, as the atone- 



356 THE ULTIMATE WARNING. 

ment for their sins through His dying love, they re- 
nounce it as God's work of mercy, and renew it as 
their own work of contempt. Sinful, unbelieving, 
unconverted men in our day do this in some meas- 
ure as the Jews did, but more knowingly, more de- 
liberately, and unto themselves, as their own private 
choice, as a thing which they accomplish alone, and 
wholly for themselves, no other participating with 
them. The Jews of old did it as a nation, and 
while they did it thus, they ignorantly fulfilled their 
own prophets and the will of God, and crucified 
Christ for their own as well as the world's salvation, 
that is, for any and all who would believe, Jews or 
Gentiles; and many of themselves, individually, 
were brought to repentance and faith in the cruci- 
cified Eedeemer, by that very act being charged 
home upon them. But when men, after knowing 
the purpose and meaning of the atonement, and re- 
ceiving its propositions, still reject Christ, and re- 
main impenitent, they crucify Christ unto themselves. 
They crucify Him, even in that sense in which Paul 
says that by the Cross of Christ the world was cruci- 
fied unto Him, and He unto the world ; just so Christ 
is crucified unto them, and they unto Christ, his 
love having no more power over them, and they no 
more interest in Him. They render themselves 
dead to Him, and His Cross dead to them. They 
render His death of no more efficacy for their salva- 
than if they had never heard of it. Nay, that is 
not all. They invest it with a dreadful efficacy in 
their own guilt, and for their own condemnation. 
It is a savor of death unto death, instead of life 



THE ULTIMATE WARNING. 357 

unto life. It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and 
Sidon, for Sodom and Gomorrah, in the day of 
judgment, than for such. This rejection of Christ 
constitutes an impossibility of repentance and of 
salvation, because, beyond Him, His sacrifice being 
neglected, there is no way of removing guilt. 

And this brings us to another profoundly solemn 
commentary and paraphrase of our whole text, that 
parallel passage in the same Epistle, which we have 
purposely reserved to this point, because it lifts up 
to a startling manifestation and preeminence both 
the reason of the impossibility and the dreadfulness 
of the sin. " For if we sin wilfully after that we 
have received the knowledge of the truth, there re- 
maineth no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain 
fearful looking for of judgment and of fiery indigna- 
tion, which shall devour the adversaries. He that 
despised Moses' law died without mercy, under two 
or three witnesses. Of how much sorer punishment 
suppose ye shall he be thought worthy, who hath 
trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath 
counted the blood of the covenant wherewith he 
was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done de- 
spite unto the Spirit of grace?" See, adds the 
Apostle afterwards, that ye refuse not Him that 
speaketh. For if they escaped not, who refused 
Him that spake on earth, much more shall not we 
escape, if we turn away from Him that speaketh 
from Heaven. Truly, this is the last limit and de- 
gree of warning in the Word of God. It is the 
last terror, even the terror of the Lord, the terror 
of the guilt and condemnation of rejecting such au- 



358 THE ULTIMATE WARNING. 

thority, such a Being, such an interposition, such a 
Saviour. The warning is clothed in language and 
embodies ideas, that, rightly pondered, could not 
fail to awaken every man from his insensibility, who 
hath not yet fled to Christ Jesus from the wrath to 
come. And yet, terrible as this passage is, it is an- 
nounced, in its very opening, as belonging to those 
simply, it is dedicated to just simply those, who sin 
wilfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth. 
Now, who that has heard the gospel has not received 
the knowledge of the truth ? And who that turns 
away from it does not reject it wilfully ? "Who that 
remains impenitent under the light of the gospel, is 
not employed, every time that the offers of salvation 
and the claims of Christ are passed before him, in 
doing despite unto the Spirit of grace, and treating 
with contempt the Cross, the sufferings, the death 
of Christ, the blood of the covenant, and the person 
of the Son of God ? Last of all, He sent unto them 
His Son, saying, they will reverence my Son. 
"When this last of all expectations, hopes, efforts, in- 
terpositions, is proved in vain, there can be no other 
possibility of salvation, there remaineth no more 
sacrifice for sin. 

Now, when this guilt of a despised and neglected 
gospel is analyzed, as it has been in these passages 
by the Holy Spirit, and is presented as God's own 
indictment against the sinner, in so many separate 
and dreadful counts, and conscience begins to see a 
little what it means, the expressions are terrible in- 
deed ; there is a lurid glare in them, a flashing of 
the bottomless pit. The drawing up of the accusa- 



THE ULTIMATE WARNING. 359 

tion is terrible, the terms are terrible, the personality, 
malignity, and wilfulness of the sin are terrible, and 
the charging of it from God Himself as a treading 
under foot of the Son of God is terrible. And men 
would fain imagine that it is not their sin that is 
meant in such an indictment, but some horrible, 
gloomy, daring and desperate apostasy, like that of 
Judas. They cannot see, they will not acknowl- 
edge, they do not feel, that they themselves are thus 
personally insulting the Son of God, and putting 
Him to an open shame. And yet, the analysis of 
this passage shows, and the demonstration of the 
nature of unbelief shows, that it belongs to just 
those who, under the light of the gospel, obey not 
the gospel, those who, at the call of the Saviour, 
come not to the Saviour, those who, at the invita- 
tion to the King's marriage supper for His Son, 
make light of it, and turn away from it to their 
farms, their merchandize, their pleasures. 

They could not well show contempt more clearly 
than by such a course. And it is contempt that 
touches the dignity, authority, and paternal throne 
and government of God at a very tender and jeal- 
ous point. It was said of old, Kiss the Son, lest 
He be angry, and ye perish from the way, when 
His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all 
they that yet trust in Him And by the Son Him- 
self it is said, " He that belie veth on the Son hath 
everlasting life ; he that belie veth not the Son shall 
not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him." 
He that, after an intelligible and repeated manifes- 
tation of the claims of the Son of God upon his 



360 THE ULTIMATE WARNING. 

faith, his gratitude, his affections, still withholds his 
whole nature and will and heart from those claims, 
and forms the habit of such reluctance and resist- 
ance, is under the whole of this fearful condemna- 
tion. There remaineth no more sacrifice for sin. 
There is no sacrifice, there can be none, that, when 
the offer of the one atoning sacrifice in the blood of 
Christ is for the last time rejected, and its efficacy 
despised, can atone for the sin of such wilful and de- 
liberate rejection both of God's authority and mercy, 
or prevent the consummation of such a choice of 
everlasting destruction from the presence of the 
Lord. 

And therefore this whole subject shows, in a most 
vivid light, the greatness of the sin of unbelief in 
Christ, above all other sins, and the profound depth 
and solemnity of meaning in the question of the 
Apostle, How shall we escape, if we neglect so great 
salvation ? It shows the necessity of immediate sub- 
mission to Christ, and the hazard of remaining im- 
penitent, always the guilt of unbelief increasing, as 
well as the power, and always the gulf widening be- 
tween the soul and heaven. A man living on in 
sin under the gospel, lives under the malediction of 
Hebrews, 6 : 4, 5, 6 ; and every moment is in dan- 
ger of being shot through with that tremendous im- 
possibility of a renewal unto repentance. There is 
no safety but in a decisive, hearty, humble prostra- 
tion of the soul at the feet of the Eedeemer. 

And here we see how dangerous the habit of in- 
decision, the habit of being half-moved, and yet not 
changed, beneath the powers of the world to come. 



THE ULTIMATE WARNING. 361 

There are multitudes in this undecided condition, up 
to the last hour. They are always going to believe, 
going to repent, going to prepare for death, going 
to begin the work of faith and repentance. They 
are always, as in the parable of the foolish virgins 
represented, going to buy, till the great midnight 
cry, Behold the Bridegroom cometh ! Then comes 
the end, wholly unexpected ; death, with the sting of 
sin in full power, arrests the soul for judgment, and 
the door is shut, and it is too late forever. There 
are those, whose whole probationary existence, under 
the full light of the gospel, seems to be passed in this 
way, oscillating, swinging, between heaven and hell ; 
raised under the power of Divine truth almost 
periodically very near to heaven, and then retreat- 
ing again, like the motion of the tides, swayed by 
the heavenly bodies, but never lifted beyond a cer- 
tain limit in their earthly sphere. Just so, there is 
a certain degree of heavenly attraction experienced, 
but it never reaches to the point of conversion, and 
from every successive height to which it is carried, 
the soul inevitably falls away. At length comes 
the last power, the last effort, the last opportunity, 
and then there is no more possibility of a renewal 
of the soul to repentance. 

Often it happens that men are disappointed of an 
eternal good, and defraud their own souls of a sal- 
vation which was very near at hand, for want of a 
little additional effort, or an earnest effort at decision 
in a timely hour, at the moment of a merciful visita- 
tion. He smote thrice, and staid, is the record of 
many a soul. And the man of God was wroth 

16 



362 THE ULTIMATE WARNING. 

with, him and said, Thou shouldst have smitten five 
or six times. For want of this decision and perse- 
verance there is many a shipwreck, every week, of 
bright hopes for eternity, bright promises. Every 
Sabbath day, the work of the last Sabbath, forgotten 
and gone like the tracks upon the sea-shore, has all 
to be done over again. With many persons, it is 
just like raising a huge rock to the top of a decliv- 
ity. You get it up by great toil and patience, al- 
most to the summit, but there you have to leave it 
for a season, with props to secure it, till you can re- 
turn and finish your work. So is a serious soul, on 
the verge of the kingdom of heaven. Meantime, 
the world, and the God of this world, are busy ; He 
comes, and gradually undermines your props, or 
steals away the checks with which you sought to 
keep the rock in its position, and down it comes, 
prostrating in a moment the toil perhaps of years. 
Just so the spiritual work of the Sabbath is undone 
by the Satan of the week. The God of this world 
is busy. You think, on the Sabbath, your work is 
almost accomplished ; a lift more will set the rock 
on a secure basis ; if there could be another Sab- 
bath following upon this, the Word of God and the 
powers of the world to come, would not lose their 
grapple; the soul might be saved. But Monday 
morning the undermining work begins, and soon 
again the rock falls, and by Saturday night it is 
down lower than ever. Then the whole work has 
to be done over again. Such is the process, repeat- 
ed again and again, between God and the world, 
heaven and hell, the conflict in and for the soul, the 



THE ULTIMATE WARNING. 363 

strife and the labor for it and against it. And such 
is the history of religions impressions in many a 
soul, especially amidst the worldliness of great 
cities ; Sabbath evenings, near to heaven, but if not 
decided for Christ, then from Monday morning 
launched again upon the tide of worldliness, whirled 
in the vortex of consuming earthly anxiety and 
care. 

At this stage of our investigation let us con- 
sider from how many quarters the artillery of 
heaven's argument on this subject advances upon 
us. What an overwhelming array of demonstra- 
tion ! The Word of God — the powers of the world 
to come — the character of Christ — the work of 
atonement — the nature of the soul — the nature of 
sin — our already experience of its power and its 
misery — the activity of angels — the very joy of 
heaven ! What could we ask, what could we con- 
ceive, in the way of added proof or demonstration ! 
From every direction, eternal truth marches in upon 
us. By every avenue of logic and of feeling the 
conclusion is forced upon the soul that the mighty 
conflict which agitates the universe is a conflict for 
eternity, a conflict between two eternities, a conflict 
between the power of an endless life, and the power 
of an endless death. Nothing less than this could 
put all worlds in motion. Nothing less than this 
could range the Son of God incarnate on the one 
side and Satan on the other. Nothing less than the 
certainty and dreadfulness of an endless death, 
could bring from heaven a Divine Kedeemer, the 
Lord of Eternity, to take upon Himself our flesh 



364 THE ULTIMATE WAKNING. 

and blood, that through death He might destroy 
him that had the power of death, even the devil, 
and deliver those, who through fear of death were 
all their life- time subject to bondage. Nothing but 
this would permit that Divine Saviour, on any oc- 
casion, under any circumstances, to say of any sin- 
ner, even the most incredible, that it were good for 
that man if he had never been born. 



Now, in view of all these revelations, demonstra- 
tions, and elements of excitement and of power, the 
voice of the Lord our God speaks to His church, 
His people, collectively as well as individually, 
"Wherefore gavest not thou my money into the 
bank, and then at my coming I might have required 
mine own with usury ?" 

The true spiritual view of this text is one of 
great solemnity, power, and glory. The grandest, 
mightiest, and most responsible stewardship on 
earth, is that with spiritual elements, spiritual pos- 
sessions, spiritual agencies. The possession and the 
use of truth is the greatest of all responsibilities. 
What a man does with his wealth is of almost no 
consequence, in comparison with what he does with 
his knowledge. The houses, or lands or stocks he 
holds, are dead lumber, and have no power of 
usury, in comparison with the accumulating, ener- 
getic, vital power of truth. This is not the ordinary 
conception; men feel very little responsibility for 
their use of the truth with which they are entrust- 
ed ; but when they stand in judgment before God, 
then will they see and know that their knowledge 



366 THE CHURCH'S STEWARDSHIP. 

constituted the overwhelming preponderance in 
their stewardship, that it was their use or abuse of 
truth, that determined everything else in time and 
eternity, and that where they wasted one talent of 
silver, they misapplied, or buried, or laid away to 
rust, ten thousand talents of truth, ten thousand 
demonstrations of God, ten thousand convictions of 
conscience. Truth for eternity has such vitality 
and preciousness, that its stewardship is either of 
death unto death, or life unto life. It may be held 
in idleness and insensibility, and that is to bury it in 
a napkin, and defraud both God and man. It may 
be held in unrighteousness, and with a reprobate 
mind, and that is to make it unfit even for the 
world's dunghill. It may be held in distortion and 
denial and deceit, and that is to make the world's 
medicine the world's poison, as if a man could 
make the rivers of a land run Prussic Acid, or the 
clouds rain down arsenic. 

We have been dwelling on the powers of the 
world to come. We must consider now the re- 
sponsibility and stewardship of the church as in- 
vested with them, and why it is that such mighty 
agencies accomplish, after all, so small results. 

God doth with us as we with torches do, not 
light them for themselves. He created all things by 
Jesus Christ, to the intent that unto principalities 
and powers in heavenly places might be known by 
the church the manifold wisdom of God. The 
church is a body of His stewards, the repository of 
wealth for the universe, His chosen and perpetual 
company, the general assembly and church of the 



THE CHURCH'S STEWARDSHIP. 367 

first-born, the commonwealth of Israel, a chosen 
generation, a royal priesthood, a peculiar people, to 
show forth the praises of Him who hath called them 
out of darkness into His marvellous light. It is a 
commonwealth having a life individual, and a life 
social, public, mutual, confraternal, incorporate, in 
Himself, to carry on the administration of the vast, 
yea infinite estate, which He has committed to the 
whole body, in trust not only for men on earth, but 
principalities and powers in heaven. For the exe- 
cution of this trust He has prepared this living 
spiritual body, which indeed is His body, the ful- 
ness of Him that filleth all in all. There is one 
body, and one spirit, even as ye are called in one 
hope of your calling ; one Lord, one faith, one bap- 
tism ; one God and Father of all, who is above all, 
and through all, and in you all. The preparation 
of this body for this stewardship is first of all indi- 
vidual, and " unto every one of us is given grace 
according to the measure of the gift of Christ." 
The church is called and composed first of all in its 
members, not its officers, in Christ. After that He 
saith, " when He ascended up on high, He led cap- 
tivity captive, and gave gifts to men. And He 
gave some, apostles, and some, prophets, and some, 
evangelists, and some, pastors and teachers, for the 
perfecting of the saints, for the work of the minis- 
try, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we 
all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowl- 
edge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto 
the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." 
He has done all things on a mighty and glorious 



368 THE CHURCH'S STEWARDSHIP. 

scale, and having so prepared the body, the steward- 
ship with which He has invested it is inconceivably 
costly and glorious. 

What, then, are some of the elements of this stew- 
ardship ? What have we to work with, and what 
is it that we are to work, what agencies to set and 
keep in vital operation, for the advancement of 
God's kingdom, the accomplishment of God's pur- 
poses ? On a general view, we have the Idea of 
God, and men's accountability to Him ; His holiness 
and justice, and men's sinfulness; death, and all 
that may come after death ; the undeniable inward 
convictions of mankind ; the whole range of their 
natural theology of sin and misery ; the law writ- 
ten in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness, 
and in their thoughts accusing or excusing one an- 
other ; their sense of guilt and their knowledge of 
retribution, experimental and foreboded. We have 
the whole disclosures of revealed religion, Immor- 
tality, Eternity, the Judgment, Heaven, Hell, the 
Second Death, Conscience acting with reference to 
these things, the Plan of Kedemption, the Mystery 
of the Incarnation, the Cross of Christ, Eegenera- 
tion by the Holy Spirit and the vast law, immuta- 
ble, unquestionable, a new creature in Christ Jesus^ 
or eternal condemnation; the thunder of the Law, 
the mercy of the Gospel, the awakening Word, 
sharper than any two-edged sword, and the con- 
vincing and illuminating Spirit, searching all things, 
and revealing the character and ruin of the lost soul. 
All these elements of knowledge and of power are 
gathered together, natural and Divine, and concen- 



THE CHURCH'S STEWARDSHIP. 369 

trated, compacted, and illustrated, in the stupendous 
mystery of the character, person, and work of Jesus 
Christ and Him crucified. Not to know anything 
among men but Him, is to know all things. 

But the natural man receiveth not the things of 
the Spirit of God, but they are foolishness unto 
him ; neither can he know them, because they are 
spiritually discerned. He knows even his natural 
theology only by guesses and terrors, and gloomy 
doubts, fears, forebodings ; and the best and most 
certain of his knowledge, and the best expressed, is 
but as the shadows of a fire upon the wall in a sub- 
terranean dungeon ; but of things Divine he know- 
eth nothing as he ought to know, and receiveth 
nothing with open understanding and belief. For 
men in their native state in sin have the understand- 
ing darkened, being alienated from the life of God, 
through the ignorance that is in them because of 
the blindness of their hearts. And as it is written, 
Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have en- 
tered into the heart of man the things that God 
hath prepared for those who love Him, so neither 
the disclosures by which God demonstrates those 
things, nor the revelations of the way by which 
they are to be attained, nor the worth nor the reality 
of them, are understood or appreciated by a mind 
beneath the darkness of a sinful heart. To prepare 
for the teaching of these truths there must therefore 
be an investiture of the soul with the spiritual life 
and understanding of them ; to render God's church 
a teaching church, a living, and not mere specula- 
tive or technical intelligence, a church wielding these 

16* 



370 THE CHUKCH'S STEWAEDSHIP. 

elements and applying them in demonstration of 
the spirit and of power, there must be a possession of 
them, and of the life of them, and an understanding 
of them, as Christ Himself possesses and under- 
stands them. 

These treasures are treasures in the ore, in the 
quartz, in veins, in mountains, in precious impalpa- 
ble dust of sacred truth, as countless as the sands. 
It must be collected with great labor and skill, you 
must go down into the mines, you must work at 
quartz-crushing and sand-washing, you must prove 
the metal, it must be assayed, and it must be coined 
for circulation, and the mint is that of the Spirit of 
God in our own hearts. It is a mint of life, and 
not of stamp, form, impression merely. There 
might be the most orthodox die, cutting by rule 
with metaphysical regularity, and yet the truth be 
dead truth, dormitory truth, the respectable ortho- 
dox furniture of a heart dead in trespasses and 
sins, instead of the fuel, and the fire, and the light, 
that warms, irradiates, enlivens and rejoices, and 
the pure air that refreshes, and the living water and 
the bread of life. For all these emblems, and more 
than all, are used, almost in rhetorical confusion, 
yet with the rhetoric of loving truth, to set forth 
these powers and responsibilities, and the office of 
the heart by the Spirit, and the Spirit in the heart, 
to keep them from mere form and death, and to 
illustrate and enforce them. Your heart must be the 
mint of life, or the truth in it is death unto death. 
Your heart must be the mint of life, or your stew- 
ardship is a stewardship of guilt and condemnation. 



THE CHURCH"S STEWARDSHIP. 371 

If the stewardship appointed be the holding of 
these truths, and the illustrating, demonstrating 
and enforcing them out of God's Word, there must 
be a knowledge of them by experience, and a par- 
ticipation of the life of them ; and for this God has 
provided. This is the baptism of His church with 
power from on high as at Pentecost, and the turn- 
ing of truth, otherwise merely speculative, into life 
and fire in the heart. " For God hath revealed 
them unto us by His Spirit ; for the Spirit searcheth 
all things, yea, the deep things of God. And we 
have received, not the spirit of the world, but the 
Spirit which is of Grod, that we might know the 
things that are freely given to us of Grod. Which 
things also we speak, not in the words which man's 
wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teach- 
eth, comparing spiritual things with spiritual." And 
where this life is in the heart, this living spirit of 
truth, it forms itself into tongues of fire for the 
mind, and leaps from mind to mind, even in the 
rudest and most unlettered shapes of language, 
when mformed by that Divine all-quickening spirit. 
Thus God accompanies the investiture of His church 
in this stewardship with the faculties for its control 
and management, the spirit of love, and of power, 
and of a sound mind. 

There can be nothing more glorious than this 
ministry. It is a ministry of the church in general ; 
and then, as a ministry also in particular, in the 
forms ordained of God, it grows out of the church, 
out of Christ in and with the church, and is set in 
the church, a part and parcel, a concentration and 



372 THE CHUECH'S STEWAKDSHIP. 

particular investment of the life of the church in 
Christ Jesus. " For the manifestation of the Spirit is 
given to every man to profit withal. And in all 
varieties of gifts worketh that one and the self-same 
Spirit, dividing to every man severally as He will. 
For as the body is one, and hath many members, 
and all the members of that one body, being many, 
are one body, so also is Christ in the Church of 
Christ. For by one Spirit are we all baptized into 
one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether bond 
or free, and have all been made to drink into one 
Spirit." It is the ministry and stewardship of the 
church. And so Peter commands, " As every man 
hath received the gift, even so, minister the same 
one to another, as good stewards of the manifold 
grace of God. If any man speak, let him speak as 
the oracles of God speak ; if any man minister, let 
him do it of the ability that God giveth ; that God 
in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ." 
It is the ministry and stewardship of the church, 
prepared and designated as the Sons of God in the 
midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among 
whom it is their work to shine as lights in the 
world, holding forth the word of life. 

It is also, as the ministry, more particularly, of 
the Elders and appointed Shepherds in and of the 
church, by the will of Christ, the same stewardship, 
and an instrumentality prepared and established of 
God for the fulfilment of that stewardship. " And 
so," says the Apostle, " our sufficiency is of God, 
who hath made us able ministers of the New Testa- 
ment ; not of the letter, but of the Spirit ; for the 



THE CHURCH'S STEWARDSHIP. 373 

letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life. Now, the 
Lord is that Spirit ; and where the spirit of the Lord 
is, there is liberty. And we all, beholding as in a 
glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the 
same image from glory to glory as by the Spirit of 
the Lord. For God, who commandeth the light to 
shine out of darkness hath shined in our hearts, to 
give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God 
in the face of Jesus Christ. And He that hath 
wrought us for the self-same thing is God, who also 
hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit. All 
things are of God, who hath first reconciled us to 
Himself by Jesus Christ, and then given to us the 
ministry of reconciliation. And as we are allowed 
of God to be put in trust with the Gospel even so 
we speak, not as pleasing men, but God who trieth 
our hearts. And as we have this treasure in earthen 
vessels, it is that the excellency of the power may 
be of God, and not of us, and that all gifts and 
graces might redound to the glory of God." 

Thus, then, the gift of the ministry itself to the 
church of Christ is a gift for the fulfilment of its 
great stewardship, the gift of an agency prepared 
of God, and kept in vital activity, that the Word 
of God itself may have free course and be glorified. 
And the commonwealth of Israel are commanded to 
take to their hearts, and bear upon their hearts, those 
who thus labor among them, and are over them in 
the Lord, and who admonish them, and to esteem 
them very highly in love for their work's sake, and 
to pray for them, that utterance may be given unto 
them, and freedom and victory in preaching the 



874 THE church's stewardship. 

word. And all are exhorted and commanded, even 
the whole body of believers, to have the Word of 
Christ dwelling in them richly in all wisdom, and 
circulating from soul to soul in life and power. They 
are commanded to walk in wisdom towards those that 
are without, to walk as children of the light, to 
walk in the wisdom of winning souls, and to put on 
the whole armor of righteousness, and to use the 
Sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God. 

And there is a special and personal discipline, of 
which we can only glance at the outline, but which 
God bestows, and which it is the responsibility of 
the Christian, the individual steward, to keep up, 
since thus only he can keep his talent out of the 
earth and the napkin, and God's money in circula- 
tion and at usury. It is individual experience by 
the Spirit of God, which alone can fit the believer 
for the work of God. Accordingly, this is vouch- 
safed, just according to the fervor of desire and 
earnestness of prayer with which it is sought. The 
great prayer of Christ for the disciples was a conse- 
crating prayer for the illumination and sanctincation 
of His church by the spirit. "Sanctify them 
through thy truth ; thy Word is truth. As thou 
hast sent me into the world, so have I sent them 
into the world, and the glory which thou hast given 
me, I have given them. I have given unto them 
the words which thou hast given unto me. I have 
manifested unto them thy name ; keep them through 
thy name." "When the Comforter is come, whom 
I will send unto you from the Father, even the 
Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, 



THE CHURCH'S STEWARDSHIP. 375 

He shall testify of me. He will guide you into all 
truth. He will show you things to come. He shall 
glorify me, for he shall receive of mine, and shall 
show it unto you. And if ye abide in me, and my 
words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will and 
it shall be done for you. These things have I 
spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, 
and that your joy might be full." 

Such joy in the Lord is a Christian's great strength 
in this stewardship. And God's discipline by his 
Spirit is kept up in the soul, that the truth of God 
may be constantly realized by it. The soul is ad- 
mitted to behold the Saviour's glory, and is baptized 
with His constraining love, and is taught to rejoice in 
Him with joy unspeakable and full of glory. What 
the scene of the transfiguration was to Peter, James, 
and John, what the entrancement into the third 
heavens was to Paul, that, the teaching and the dis- 
cipline of the Holy Spirit with Divine truth is to 
everv believer. Christians are taken down into 
hell, they are carried up into heaven, they are made 
to feel and to know that the powers of the world to 
come, and the scenes of redemption in this world, 
are no cunningly-devised fables. They have the 
earnest of the Spirit given to them, and the Spirit of 
Adoption, and the witness of the Spirit in their 
hearts, and the earnest of the inheritance of heav- 
enly glory. They have not received the spirit of 
bondage unto fear, but the Spirit of adoption, cry- 
ing Abba, Father. And the Spirit beareth witness 
with theirs that they are the children of God, and 
if children, then heirs ; heirs of God and joint heirs 



376 THE CHURCH'S STEWARDSHIP. 

with Christ. They have the spirit of hope, and the 
spirit of patience, and the spirit of faith, and the 
spirit of prayer, and the peace of God that passeth 
all understanding, keeping heart and mind in Christ 
Jesus. They have the Spirit helping their infirmities, 
and inasmuch as they know not what they should 
pray for as they ought, they have the Spirit Himself 
making intercession for them with groanings which 
cannot be uttered. Being chosen and sealed by 
that Holy promised Spirit for God's work, they are 
baptized with the spirit of wisdom and revelation 
in the knowledge of Christ, the eyes of their under- 
standing being enlightened, that they may know 
what is the hope of His calling, and what the riches 
of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and 
what the exceeding greatness of His power towards 
us who believe, according to the working of His 
mighty power which He wrought in Christ, when 
He raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His 
own right hand in the heavenly world. According 
to the riches of Christ's glory, they are strengthened 
with might by His Spirit in the inner man, that 
Christ may dwell in their hearts by faith, that they, 
being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to 
comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and 
length, and depth, and height, and to know the love 
of Christ which passeth knowledge, and to be filled 
with all the fulness of G-od. And all this is done 
on purpose that they may be good stewards of the 
manifold grace of God, that they may be strong in 
the Lord and in the power of His might, that they 
may be no more children, tossed to and fro, and 



THE CHURCH'S STEWARDSHIP. 377 

carried about with every wind of doctrine, but 
speaking the truth in love, may grow up into Him 
in all things, who is the head, even Christ, from 
whom the whole body, fitly joined together, and 
compacted by that which every joint supplieth, ac- 
cording to the effectuul working in the measure of 
every part, maketh increase of the body unto the 
edifying of itself in love. 

All this is done, that they may be filled with the 
knowledge of God's will in all wisdom and spiritual 
understanding, that they may walk worthy of the 
Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good 
work and increasing in the knowledge of God; 
strengthened with all might, according to His glo- 
rious power, unto all patience and long-suffering 
with joyfulness ; giving thanks unto the Father, 
who hath made us meet to be partakers of the inher- 
itance of the saints in light ; who hath delivered us 
from the power of darkness, and hath translated us 
into the kingdom of His dear Son. From the ex- 
perience of such a translation, as from the flying 
chariot of Elijah, they can speak to a dying world. 
It is the dispensation of God, not with Paul only, 
but with the whole church of Christ, to fulfil the 
word of God, which for that purpose is made mani- 
fest to His saints, to whom God would make known 
the riches of the glory of this Divine mystery of 
salvation, even Christ in you, the hope of glory. 

In addition to all that mighty range of truths and 
influences, through which we have now rapidly 
glanced, that go to make up the vast stewardship 
of the church of Christ, God has also given those 



378 THE CHURCH'S STEWARDSHIP. 

simple ordinances appointed in His word, and con- 
nected with it, of which the Sacrament of the 
Lord's Supper is most prominent and important. It 
is a scene of solemn and affecting remembrance, 
and a source of most impressive thought and feel- 
ing. In it the wandering heart may meet the Sa- 
viour, and the tempted heart, as Peter's, behold His 
reproving look, and the heart that has been mourn- 
ing after Him may have Him again made known in 
the breaking of bread. It is the place of renew- 
ed vows, renewed mercies, renewed and renewing 
grace, compassion and forgiving love on Christ's 
part, and renewed penitence and faith on ours. It 
is a landing place of rest, refreshment, survey, and 
setting forth again upon the Christian journey. It 
is an ordinance for gratitude and love enkindled 
and increased, and strength administered, as well as 
sins deplored. It is a mount of vision, where the 
glass is held to the eye of faith, and we may take a 
view of our fair and bright inheritance in heaven, 
and for the joy set before us, be prepared to endure 
the Cross, despising the shame, and in the light of 
our Saviour's sufferings, be made willing to go forth 
and work for Him, and suffer for Him, in behalf of 
the salvation of a world of dying sinners. 

Out of this stewardship, conducted from such ex- 
perience, comes a great revenue of praise to God in 
the salvation of dying men. Preached out of this 
living experience, in the majesty and life of all those 
heavenly endowments and preparations by the 
spirit, the Word of God is irresistible, and the result 
is described by Paul in the Thessalonians, " For our 



THE CHURCH'S STEWARDSHIP. 379 

Gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in 
power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assur- 
ance, and ye became followers of the Lord, having 
received the word in much affliction, with joy of 
the Holy Ghost. For this cause also thank we God 
without ceasing, because, when ye received the 
word of God, which ye heard of us, ye received it 
not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the 
word of God, which effectually worketh also, in 
you that believe." 

Now, the powers of the world to come ; the truths 
of God's word, and the ordinances appointed therein, 
are elements of motive, energy, and influence, im- 
measurable, and capable of every increase and ex- 
pansion ; but yet they depend on the state of the 
heart to be proved living or lifeless, to develop 
strength or weakness. If the church were wholly 
in a right state, with the vital electricity from the 
Cross of Christ poured through it and around it ; 
and charging the heart of its individual members, it 
would be a governing magnet upon this earth, and 
a central spring, impelling the whole world's move- 
ments. And just let us consider, on the other 
hand, how great the guilt, if such be at any time the 
condition of the church of Christ, that all these 
mighty elements shall be neutralized, fettered, pal- 
sied, shall be held in it as it were in weak solution, 
and not in vital energetic composition, shall be held 
invisible and powerless, instead of manifest and ef- 
fective? Does not God justly demand, in reference 
to any such hiding of His power, "Wherefore gavest 
thou not my money into the bank, and then at my 



Q 



80 THE church's stewardship. 



coming I might have required mine own with 
usury." Is it possible to conceive of any so great 
treachery as this? Can there be any imagined 
breach of trust that approximates to any comparison 
with it ? To have a power committed, on which 
depends the advancing redemption of the world, to 
have it mysteriously thrown upon the state of spirit- 
uality in the church of Christ, (and mysterious 
alike the responsibility and the power, — the power 
of mischief by indolence and delay, and the power 
of good by wakefulness, and fervor, and activity) 
to have this power committed and this trust betray- 
ed,' — suppose it be by worldliness, by indifference, 
by neglect, by prayerlessness, by wealth, by all 
seeking their own instead of the things that are 
Jesus Christ's — what shall be said concerning so 
vast a betrayal of our stewardship ? Is it not in- 
credible that such a thing should take place, could 
be possible ? What would be thought of a corpo- 
ration with only a million of dollars vested in trust 
for only a thousand orphans, if through selfishness 
and carelessness they kept it so tied up, or so waste- 
fully expended, that nothing of it should ever come 
to the use of the absolutely needy? Now, the 
church of Jesus Christ are guardians in trust, and 
the powers of the world to come are means put into 
the hands of Christians, with which they may work 
efficiently for the redemption of lost souls. And 
what shall be said of a church of Jesus Christ, what 
of individual Christians, put in trust with these treas- 
ures for eternity, invested with these elements of glory 
and of power, if they bury, or waste, or neglect, or 



THE CHUECH'S STEWAEDSHIP. 381 

throw away, such responsibilities, capacities, possess- 
ions ? And they do bury them, they prevent their 
efficacy, they defraud God and the world, if they 
neglect the means of realizing and improving them. 

What then are the means of realizing them? 
How may they be made accumulating and product- 
ive for God and eternity. What are the peculiar 
personal responsibilities of duty, with which Chris- 
tians are invested, or to which they are held, by the 
nature of their stewardship ? They are bound to 
fervent prayer. They can do nothing without this. 
Everything languishes and dies for want of this. 
The insensibility of soul so prevalent, the indiffer- 
ence to eternal things, the apathy under the most 
vivid disclosures from the world to come, are the 
result just wholly of the neglect of secret prayer. 
There can be no feeling, while that prevails ; luke- 
warmness will grow upon the soul, till it settles in 
the sluggishness, the torpidity, preparatory to the 
horrors of an awakening in eternal death. 

But fervent prayer can produce a resurrection 
even from the death of winter. It shall cover the 
lifeless trees with new foliage, and then they shall 
yield and move at every breath of God's spirit. It 
shall clothe dead truths with beauty, and inspire 
them with subduing persuasiveness and life. It 
shall move even upon unconverted hearts and 
minds, with an influence of solemnity and power, 
which they knew not, preparing them to be power- 
fully wrought upon by the truths of eternity. And 
the same presentation of truth, that before had no 
effect, shall now, under the supplications of anxious, 



382 THE CHURCH'S STEWARDSHIP. 

yearning, heaven-beseeching hearts, under the 
united pleadings of a church awakened and at work, 
prove irresistible, by God's grace, with those who 
till then were heedless and insensible. Except in 
the atmosphere of prayer, spiritual truth cannot be 
living truth ; it may remain as a dry and dead 
speculation ; but it cannot live and give life, without 
prayer. 

But again, Christians are bound to an attendance 
and sustaining of the social means of grace. Ex- 
cept Christ be in such means, there is indeed no life 
in them. But the special promise of Christ is given 
forth to just this duty, just this labor of social 
prayer. " Where two or three are gathered in my 
name, there am I in the midst of them." Where 
Christ is, there is life, there a blessing. The mere 
form of a social gathering is indeed nothing ; but 
the disciples of Christ are bound to be there in 
heart, bound to go there from the throne of grace, 
carrying the spirit of prayer, and of compassion for 
souls to the communion of saints. 

How criminally regardless are Christians of the 
element of power contained in that promise, "Where 
two or three are." From the too frequent appearance 
of the prayer meetings in our churches, one might 
suppose that the promise meant and was understood 
to prohibit the assembling of more than two or three 
at any one time. Let it be remembered that the 
forsaking of the assembling of themselves together 
was one of the earliest symptoms of declension and 
decay in Apostolic churches, that at length died by 
the visitation of Grod in their own corruption, 



THE CHUKCH'S STEWAEDSHIP. 383 

spewed out by the indignation of the Saviour, for 
their lukewarmness, being neither cold nor hot. 
Let the members of our churches neglect their 
prayer-meetings, and they ensure the abandonment 
of God. 

They are bound to keep their own hearts with all 
diligence, for out of them are the issues of life. 
There is no life anywhere, if it be not there. And 
if they take no interest in the Eedeemer's kingdom, 
what evidence, either in heart or life, of an interest 
in Jesus. There is no power but life-power. You 
cannot move a dying world by speculation, by elo- 
quence, by majestic thought, by argument, by per- 
suasion, except it be kindled, inspired, and accom- 
panied by the Holy Spirit, except it be set on fire of 
love. This is that requisite which you must gain, if 
you would fulfil your trust. " Kestore unto me the 
joy of thy salvation, and uphold me by thy free spir- 
it ; then will I teach transgressors thy way, and sin- 
ners shall be converted unto thee." If we would 
speak of Jesus to others, we must have been with Him 
ourselves. If we would speak of heaven to others, 
and of God, and of sin, and of hell, with the tone and 
power of reality, with the vividness and fire of one 
thoroughly in earnest, we must be much with Christ 
in secret. A Christian can no more be a fervent 
messenger for God, while running on his own er- 
rands, with heart and mind absorbed in the things 
of this world, than he can serve God and mammon. 

"We cannot interest others, except as we ourselves 
have this living interest and experience. If a man 
should undertake to lecture on Australia, to give us 



384 THE CHURCH'S STEWARDSHIP. 

an account of the gold mines there, and of the man-, 
ners and customs of the natives, he would scarcely 
get an audience to pay for his lights of an evening. 
But if a man should come from Australia, bringing 
a great quantity of the gold in its virgin state, a man 
who himself has worked in the mines and gained a 
fortune, men would listen to him with eagerness ; 
the people would crowd to hear him; and the 
plainest bare unadorned recital of facts, and from his 
own experience, would be received with deeper in- 
terest than the most elaborate and perfect rhetoric 
from the other. No exquisiteness of description 
could equal the reality of life, or of truth the product 
of life. 

As the crowning work, Christians are bound, hav- 
ing thus prepared their issues of God's wealth, to go 
forth distributing them through the community. 
They are to put God's truth in circulation. They 
are to be employed in conveying and applying it to 
men's hearts and consciences. This is the one 
grand business for which God has entrusted His 
church with such grand and costly possessions. 



THE END. 



DECEMBER, 1852. 



CARTERS' NEW PUBLICATIONS. 



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pen to keep alive the records of that noble army of martyrs, whose blood has 
baptized with its hallowed effusions the glens and crags of Scotland. Beginning 
with Patrick Hamilton, the Protomartyr of the Scottish Reformation, and ending 
with the young and fervent Renwick, on whom the fiery mantle of Cargill fell, he 
tells in his simple and homely way the struggles of Scotland for the faith once de- 
livered to the saints. Such books as these make the fire burn in the heart toward 
tho old, blood-baptized church of our fathers." — Watchman and Observer. 



XIV. 

2HS BBmASIQff Q£ ST. I0HI, 

Expounded for those who Search the Scriptures. By E. W. 
Hengstenberg, of Berlin. Translated by Patrick Fairbairn. 
2 vols. 8vo. $3 50. 



XV. 



M<Q 



m 



TO sum 



Or, THE INFANT PILGRIM. By Anne Woodruffe, author of 
" Michael Kemp." 2 vols. 12mo. $150. 

" A charming book, full of deep, true, and glowing sentiment, with lively 
glimpses of character, pen-portraits and sketches, which keep the interest ever 
alive, and withal wise instruction is so happily blended that the pleasure of the 
book is only equalled by its profit." — N. Y. Observer. 



XYI. 

Or, THE LIGHTS AJVD SHADOWS OF THE ANGLICAN CHURCH. 

A Tale for the Times. By Charlotte Auley, author of " Miriam," &c 

12mo. 75 cents. 

"A most interesting story, well sustained from the beginning to the close, and 
containing many beautiful characters, and finely conceived domestic scenes." — 
Bulletin. 



CARTERS' PUBLICATIONS. 



XVII. 



Til B1B&1 eSffiPAIi 



R. 



Designed for the Assistance of Bible Classes, Families, and 
Students of the Scripture. With an Introduction by the Rev. 
Dr. Tyng. 18mo. 40 cents. 



XVIII. 

IPAXAIBIblBS (DIP §IPI£IITC 

Translated from the French of G-aussen. 16mo. Price 40 cents. 

XIX. 

fu (Off; nr, %%h nl Slustralia Smiiht 

By the author of " The Peep of Day." 
Illustrated. 16mo. 15 cents ; gilt edges, $1 00. 



^e^ Jfotye; oir, Jfoe 6oi[r)ilrie$ of Sqirope ^Described. 

By the same author. 75 cents ; gilt edges, $1. 



XXI. 

Utttifs Dnthj $thb StotratinttisL 

Morning Series. 4 vols. 12mo. $4 00. 

Vol. I. Antediluvians and Patriarchs. 
II. Moses and the Judges. 

III. Samuel, Saul, and David. 

IV. Solomon and the Kings. 

Evening Series. 4 vols. 12mo. $4 00. 

Vol. I. Job and the Poetical Books. 
II. Isaiah and the Prophets. 

III. The Life and Death of Our Lord. 

IV. The Apostles and the Early Church. 



CARTERS' PUBLICATIONS. 



XXII. 

sviBBures* 02 enaissiABriTT. 

A Series of Lectures delivered at the University of Virginia, by 
eminent Clergymen of the Presbyterian Church. With thirteen 
Portraits by Ritchie. 8vo. $2 50. 

Among the contributors to this great work are Drs. Alexander, Rice, 
Breckenridge, M'Gill, Ruffuer, Sampson, Green, Rev. T. V. Moore, <fcc. 

XXIII. 

• HOLIDAY HOUSE. 

A Series of Tales, by Catherine Sinclair. Illustrated. 16mo. 
75 cents; gilt edges, $1. 



ssa wwi 



XXIV. 



s m WUU&M 



<2B< 



Comprising his Life, Letters, and Poems, now first collected by the 
introduction of Cowper's Private Correspondence. Edited by the 
Rev. T. S. Grimshaw. With numerous illustrations on steel, and 
a fine portrait by Ritchie. 1 vol., royal 8vo. Cloth, $3 00 ; 
extra gilt, $4 ; Turkey morocco, $5 00. 

XXV. 

%\t 3nxt §bnm — SMafitm artir §littJrnm, 

By JOHN KITTO, D.D. $1 00. 



XXVI. 

U1RICA AS I F08HB If 

By MRS. DUNCAN. With Portrait. $1 50. 
" A very readable book." — Advocate and Guardian. 



XXVII. 
THE MYSTERY SOLVED ; Or, IRELAND'S MISERIES. 

THE GRAND CAUSE AND CURE. 

By the Rev. DR. DILL. 16mo. 75 cents. 

"This is a book which will attract much attention." — Commercial Adv. 



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